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FEATURING REVIEWS OF ' 

T/ME BANDITS, ^ 
FEAR NO EVIL, 

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY 

BBC's DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS. 
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. 
THEHQWLING. 

HQQBD0N(1936) 





RAIDERS 
OF THE LOST ARK 


3L0C/T^ 

IBINEQ 

^(STAR 

TEVEN 


WE REVIEW THE 
BUSTER FROM TH 
TALENTS 0FW§ 


OUTLAND 


JOHN BROSNAN 
CASTS A CRITICAL 
EYE OVER THE NEW 
OFFERING FROM 
PETER (CAPRICORN 
ONE) W/AMS, WHICH 
STARS SEAN 
CONNERY. 

SEE PAGE 22. 






cuitor Aim McKmzii 
Dnign: Rtkig Khm 
& Sttvt O'Lmrv 
An Anittinct; Chii Fimtam 
Editorial Atmttnct: GMy Firmia 
Colour: Chnnumnii Ltd 
Adutnitint: SH Spam Salti 
Distribution: Caniai 



Writars this ism: 
John Bowltt 
John Brosnan 
Tony Craudiy 
Phil Edwards 
John Fltming 
Alan Jwws 
Tisa Vahimagi 


I PbbJifJwr: Stan Laa 


VoArma 4, Number 1 1 


STARBURST 
LETTERS 4 

OUR READERS WRITE. SEE IF YOUR LETTER IS 
AMONG THIS COUECTION. 

THINGS TO 
COfAE6 

THE SECOND PAKTOF OUR SPECIAL CANNES FILM 
FESTIVAL EDITION OF OUR REGULAR NEWS 
COLUMN COMPILED BY TONY CRAWLEY. 

KITPEDLER 
OBITUARY 10 

STARBURST PAYS TRIBUTE TO DR KIT PEDLER, 
CREATOR OF DOCTOR HYHO'S CYBERMEN. WHO 
DIED RECENTLY. 

BBC'S DAY OF 
THE TRIFFIDS 12 

STARBURST PRESENTS A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF THE 
BBC PRODUCTION OF JOHN WYNDAM'S DAY OF 
THE TRIFFIDS. 

EYES OF A 
STRANGER 15 

ALAN JONES PATIENTLY REVIEWS YET ANOTHER X 
OFFERING FROM THE "STALK-AND SLASH" 
SCHOOL OF MOVIE MAKING. 


FOR YOUR EYES 



BETTER LATE THAN NEVER! JOHN BROSNAN 
REVIEWS THE LATEST OF THE BOND MOVIES. 


TIME BANDITS 18 



STARBURST LOOKS AT THE NEW FILM FROM 
MONTY PYTHON'S TERRY GILLIAM. WHICH STARS 
JOHN CLEESE. SEAN CONNERY. SHELLEY DUVALL 
AND A HOST OF OTHERS. 


OUTIAND 22 



JOHN BROSNAN CASTS A CRITICAL EYE OVER THE 
NEW SPACE FILM FROM THE DIRECTOR OF 
CAPRICORN ONE. PETER HYAMS. 


THE ORIGINAL 
FLASH GORDON 
26 



JOHN BAXTER INTERVIEWS BUSTER CRABBE, WHO 
PORTRAYED FLASH GORDON IN THREE 
UNIVERSAL SERIALS FROM 1936 TO 1940 


VIDEO SCENE 40 

STARBURST LOOKS AT SOME Of THE LATEST 
RELEASES ON VIDEO TAPE. 

BATTLETRUCK 42 

WE PRESENT A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF THE NEW FILM 
BY HARLEY COKLISS. WITH ARTWORK BY JOHN 
BOLTON. 

TALES FROM THE 
RIM 44 

PART III OF OUR ZANY SCIENCE FICTION COMIC 
STRIP FEATURE WITH SCRIPT AND FULL-COLOUR 
ARTWORK BY PAUL NEARY. 


JOHN 

CARPENTER 46 



DIRECTOR JOHN CARPENTER TALKS TO TONY 
CRAWLEY ABOUT HIS UFE AND WORK. 


IT'S ONLY A 


FEAR NO EVIL 30 MOVIE 52 


HOLLYWOOD CORRESPONDENT BILL WARREN 
SENDS THIS REVIEW OF A NEW HORROR FILM 
FROM DIRECTOR FRANK LALOGGIA. 


RAIDERS OF THE 
LOST ARK 32 



WE REVIEW THE NEW FILM FROM THE MAKERS OF 
STAR WARS AND CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. 


INSIDE DAVID 
CRONENBERG 36 

THE SECOND AND FINAL PART OF OUR IN-DEPTH 
INTERVIEW WITH THE D/REaOR OF SHIVERS, THE 
BROOD, AND SCANNERS. 


JOHN BROSNAN INVESTIGATES WHY IT IS THAT 
FILM CRITICS CAN RARELY AGREE. 

BOOK WORLD 54 

JOHN BOWLES INTERVIEWS FRANK HERBERT, 
AUTHOR OF THE DUNE SERIES. 

TV ZONE 56 

TISE VAHIMAGI LOOKS AT THE PROBLEMS THE 
PRIVATE INDIVIDUAL MUST FACE If HE WANTS TO 
LOOK AT OLD TV SHOWS AGAIN. 


JOE DANTE 59 



THE SECOND AND CONCLUDING PART OF OUR 
EPIC INTERVIEW WITH THE DIREaOR OF THE 
HOWLING. 

A Maratl Comics Praductian 


3 




siffittmsTifrraRi 


READCR^VEROfCT BUTISITART? 


I feel I must write to congratulate 
you on the latest Starburst (issue 
35). So, congratulations! I don't 
mind having to pay 70p for it now, 
the extra colour pages make it 
really worth it. I sue 35 is the best 
yet. 

Thanks for showing us what the 
new Doctor Who looks like. Despite 
some criticisms I can't wait to see 
how Peter Davison interprets the 
role. This Doctor is a cricket fan, I 
believe. 

I enjoyed the Clash of the 
Titans features and can't wait to see 
the film. While on the subject. I'd 
like to say that it's good to see a 
review with mention of what others 
thought of the film, as Phil 
Edwards did. It makes the review 
sound fairer. 

Liked the pictures of Prunella 
Gee and Bo Derek (by the way, 
when are you doing your sequel to 
your Fantasy Females issue. It's 
long overdue!) 

Liked the Convention Reports. 
Good idea! 

Finally, like to make a general 
comment. You seem to avoid doing 
features on tv shows. You get 
round it by doing a bit on the 
writers for Star Trek, a chat with 
Gerry Anderson on Space 1999 and 
one with Douglas Adams on Hitch 
Hikers Guide. How about doing full 
features on these shows, preferably 
in colour. 

Anyway, don't loose your towel 
and keep up the good work. 

David Jackson, 
Morley, 
Leeds. 

Don't worry, Dave. We haven't 
forgotten about the Fantasy 
Females. Stick around! And on the 
subject of tv shows, Tise Vahimagi 
explains the problems that beset 
those who would write articles on 
the subject in this month's TV 
Zone column . . . 


HORRORS! 

I'm glad to see Starburst now gives 
more coverage to the horror genre. 
Your magazine is now one of the 
best on the market. But why not 
have a classified section? I'm sure 
this would prove to be a popular 
item. 

John Connelly, 
Herts. 

As you may be aware, John, we 
now carry a classified section, 
usually on page 58. . . 


Browsing through Book World in 
Starburst 35, I came across a 
mention of the British SF Awards. 
The Best Artist winner stopped me 
dead in my tracks. I mean, holy 
Belgium! Peter A. Jones as best 
artist? (Adolph Hitler as most 
liberal politician? Cyanide as the 
most popular seasoning?) 

I suggest Jones' popularity is 
based on quantity rather than 
quality. He chums out the stuff 
with such unceasing regularity that 
his less prolific competitors can't 
get a brush stroke in edgewise. Not 
that his competitors are that good 
- only in comparison to his work. 

Right now the only artist who 
would get my vote is No Award, 
whose outstanding work may be 
seen on the inside covers of 
thousands of paperback books. 
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think 
I'll go away and hide . . . 

Life. Don't talk to me about 
life. Zootte murtle zootle murtle 
zootle murtle. 

Lee Mendham, 
Chatham, 
Kent. 

Any members of The British 
Science Fiction Association or the 
Peter A. Jones Fan Club care to 
comment? 


COMMENTS 

FROMTHERIM 

Congratulations on Starburst 35 
with its new look making for a 
better read than ever. The eight 
extra pages of colour are just what 
the magazine needed. I've always 
felt it a pity in the past that so 
many superb stills had to be printed 
in black and white, thus lessening 
their impact. 

However, I must admit to being 
less than impressed by Tales from 
the Rim. Paul Neary's artwork is 
very pleasant to the eye but as sf 
satire it just doesn't work. It's a 
nice idea to have a comic strip in 
Starburst, but not Tales from the 
Rim. Having said that, perhaps I'm 
making my judgement too early, 
leaving Mr Neary's concept to 
become genuinely amusing and 
intelligent in later months. If that 
turns out to be the case, I apologise 
now! 

The two reviews of Excalibur 
made fascinating contrasts in 
opinions, leaving one wondering 
whether the film really was worth 
seeing or not. In the end I put my 


faith in Phil Edwards and risked the 
price of a cinema ticket Nearly two 
and a half tedious hours later, I 
realised I had once again wronged 
John Brosnan! His review was as 
apt as usual and, despite all its rave 
reviews in the popular newspapers, 
Excalibur is an over-rated, spec- 
tacular bore. With The Heretic and 
Zardoz also to his name, I think I 
shall now steer clear of the films of 
John Boorman. His projects are 
usually ambitious but seldom 
successful. 

Issue 35 was also enjoyable for 
its reports on a number of sf 
conventions. Cons are an important 
aspect of fandom but seldom 
warrant a mention in Starburst. Yet 
I for one would love to know all 
the goings on at any con I may have 
missed due to lack of time, money 
or whatever. So come on, guys, lets 
make Convention Comer a regular 
feature. 

Paul Malemed, 
Brunswick, 
Manchester. 

I am writing praising this new 
comic strip which has appeared, 
hurray! We have finally got one 
that's worth reading. The ones you 
used to have — no comment, but 
Tales from the Rim is really good. 
The art's good and so far I think it 
is quite witty. This could be a 
winner! Give Paul Neary 10 out of 
10 and a pat on the back. I look 
forward to the next episode. 

I really like the new look 
mag. Things seem to get better and 
better. Keep it up it gives us British 
sf fans something to be proud of. 

David Howell, 
Darleston, 
West Midlands. 


OUATERMASSCAFF 

Good to see an article involving the 
BBC Quatermass (TV Zona Star- 
burst 35) which I found very 
interesting. Unfortunately I would 
like to point out a mistake about 
one of the photographs from 
Quatermass and the PK. It is stated 
that the bottom left picture shows 
Captain Potter trying to pull 
Barbara Judd away from the 
"partly constructed tube station". 
Had this been a photograph from 
the film version this would have 
been totally correct. But in the 
series the space ship hull is found 
when the foundations for an office 
block are being dug. The only 
similarity between the two discov- 
eries is that they are both made by 
archeologists who take over the 


sites when prehistoric remains are 
uncovered. From my basic 
knowledge of the series I believe 
myself to be correct. And had I 
been writing the article, before 
reading the script from the series, I 
would probably have made the 
sanw mistake. 

Nick Cooper, 
Hull, 

North Humberside. 

Alan McKenzie replies: "In all 
fairness to Tise Vahimagi, I should 
point out that the mistake was 
mine and not Tise's. SUly of me to 
assume diet the tv version 
resembled the later Andrew Keir 
Hammer film in every detail ..." 

AREADER 

STRMCESBACK 

I felt, after much deliberation, that 
I had to write on correspondent 
Mark Mamor's "View from the 
U.S." in the letters section of Star- 
burst 32. Rarely has a letter in this 
magazine so angered me - though I 
applaud Mr Marmor's intention of 
giving an issue-by-issue review, and 
Starburst itself for print it. 

However, some of the views 
which he raises are incredible, and I 
am rather surprised that we haven't 
seen any letters responding to them 
before now. I mean, Mr Marmor 
states that he's only highlighting 
Starbuist's bad points without 
mentioning the multitude of good 
ones. Well, if you'd have told me he 
enjoyed Starburst you could have 
fooled me! 

Dbviously, Mr Marmor is right 
to point out some of the magazines 
faults or mistakes. For example, the 
lack of colour. I think it's ok to 
have loads of colour in a lavish U.S. 
magazine. But I think each maga- 
zine satisfies slightly different areas 
of appeal. I mean, if you're looking 
for glossy pictures and information, 
the American mags are very ade- 
quate. But its pretty hopeless if you 
want honest, intelligent, and 
constructive criticism. It's pretty 
hopeless and even perhaps boring. 
Starburst provides information and 
criticism (good and bad points), 
and it isn't dull - it recognises 
we've all got points of view. Doubt- 
less we could be given pages of 
colour too - but 95 plus pence for 
such a magazine is pretty expen- 
sive! 

Mr Marmor's comments on Star- 
burst 22 (ref: the Gerry Anderson 
Productions, etc.) are unbelievable. 
There can't be many of us who 
doubt that Space 1999 was made 


4 


Please send all comments and criticisms to: 
Starburst Letters, Starburst Magazine, 
Marvel Comics Ltd, Jadwin House, 
205-211 Kentish Town Road, 
London, NWS, United Kingdom. 


for American audiences, specially 
since that's where all the money is. 
Mr Marmor says it suffered due to 
its "crass stupidity". I was always 
under the impression that it was the 
first series episodes wdiich were 
'absurd'. On the second series, a 
scientific advisor checked scripts 
for stupid mistakes and premises. 
Yet what? It still got cancelled! 
And of course, I assume that when 
Mr Marmor talks about Space not 
having any 'superstar status', he's 
on about American guests/cast. 
America is biggest, and biggest is 
best? Mr Marmor then goes on to 
accuse John Brosnan (and the 
British readers, too) of virtual anti- 
American sentiment but like other 
Americans, refuses to acknowledge 
the large contributions which the 
British film/tv industries make to 
British and international produc- 
tions. 

Mr Marmor must be very narrow 
-minded if he cannot bear to read 
reviews which point out (gasp!) the 
faults in films. Anyone who does 
this is "slandering and libelling". 

I don't believe film companies 
should expect you to write lauda- 
tory (and therefore possibly 
dishonest) reviews in exchange for 
press information. What's the point 
of having a magarine reviewing 
movies if you know that they're 
going to say something nice about 
them? It's treating the readers as 
mindless rombies unable to Kcept 
any real critical debate - at least 
John Brosnan realises he's giving us 
something which we can think 
about and disagree with if we wish! 
And what's the harm in that? 

Simon Morris, 
Shropshire. 


We regret that vw cannot enter into 
correspondence with readers nor 
answer letters personally. 


PuUahed monthly by Msrvol Comkt 
Ltd, Jodwin Hou$o. 205-211 Ktntiah 
Town Rood, London NV\f5. Bngltnd. AH 
photographic matariaf it copyright C 
BBC. NBC. ABC. CBS. ITC. IBA, 
Columbia. Naw Raalm. Rank, Twantiath 
Cantury-Fox Unitad Artists. Warrtar 
Bros. Paramount. Oppidan. IDWr Ditnay 
Productions. Toia Audios. CIC. EMI. 
MCM. MCA'Univarsal (untass otharwisa 
statadi and appaars with thair kind 
permission, AH ramaining matarial it 
copyright C 1981 Manra! Comics Ltd. a 
subsidiary of CadafKa Induttrias, Star- 
burst is a trademark and tradanarr>a of 
Marvaf Comkt Ltd. INhila contributions 
ara ancouragad, tha pubHshar cannot ba 
hald rasponsibla for untoHdtad manu- 
scripts and photos. All lattars tant to 
Starburst will ba considarad for 
publication, for display adaartising 
contact Jana McKamia, SH Spaca Salas 
A Markating, 6 Bamars Maws. London 
W1. England. Ol SBO-9012. Printadin tha 
Unitad Kingdom. 


JOfCECARSONmiSUNlTE! 

a 



I thought the readers of Starburst might enjoy a look at this revealing snap of 
that little-known English actress, Joyce Carson, which appeared in a recent issue 
of the French magazine, Cine-Revue. 

Something about her looks familiar, don't you think? 

Michel Parry, Brentford, Middlesex. 


5 



"bnws nCiunE. 


CANNES ON 
TRIAL 

This was the year the Cannes festival 
was on trial. Hollywood was judge, 
jury and very nearly executioner. The 
Americans felt (quite rightly; and not 
just them) that they had been ripped 
off enough last year when hotel and 
bar prices rocketted for the festival 
fortnight. You'd be lucky then to get 
change out of a fiver for a coke— et 
some bars. Usually, those bars like the 
Hotel Carlton terrace where everyone 
who thinks they're anyone tend to 
congregate in order to be seen by 
everyone else who also happens to 
think they* re someone , , . 

STELLA STARR 
II 

Stella Starr lives ... I 

That's the big news emanating from 
the somewhat frantic festival lo- 
cations of Caroline Munro's Last 
Horror Rliir— ebout which I said more 
than enough last month. Once Horror 
is in the can (or indeed, the Cannes), 
the same Neon production team- 
director David Winters, producer 
Judd Hamilton — are making ready to 
start shooting . Stella Starr vs The 
Space Pirates. 

The script is an old one, but some- 
what beefed— well, Munroed— up. It 
stems from Luigi Cotzi's Star Patrol, in 
fact, which was never penned with 
Stella Starr in mind. She's not even in 
it. But she sure is now. Caroline 
shares the rights in the Stella 
character with Luigi, and Judd 
(Caroline's husband and the robot in 
the first film) has been trying to get a 
sequel into operation for soma years. 
Luigi Cozzi is not overly interested in 
repeating Star Cradi or any of the 
characters, so he's left them to it So 
far, the Hamiltons have opted out— et 
the very last minute — of two Ameri- 
cans backed plans for a sequel. The 
scripts, or more important the hand- 
ling of Stella and the other characters, 
didn't satisfy them. (It was after the 
second project fell through that 
Caroline, at a loose end in New York, 
made IMaaiac). 

"It's great news, isn't itT' said 
Caroline in Cannes. "I always say the 
gypsy girl in Captain Kranos is my 
favourite character in my films— I en- 
joy walking round with tore feet and 
that— but Stella is very important to 
me. A nice, biggy role with lots of 
action scenes I love to do— karate, 
running, all outdoor stuff. She's a sort 
of swashbuckling lady, a sort of 
Bartiaralls-Wondor Woman type . . . 
not liking men, just her own woman, 
really". 

Judd will turn up again as Stella's 
robot companion. And leading the 
space pirates will be none other than 
Caroline's Maniac and Last Horra* 



Top: Maniac star Joa Spinall potat for a photograph on tha sat of his 
iatastmoma Tha Last Horror Film, which aiso faaturas his Maniac 
partnar Carolina Munro. Above: Carolina Munro and husband Judd 
Hamilton, producar of Tha Last Horror Film, posa for photographers 
whiia on location at tha Cannes Film Festival. Photographs courtesy 
of Trevor Jaai. 


Rbn co-star, Joe Spinell. After which, 
I think that'll be just enough of this 
strange beauty-and-the-beast team- 
ng, fellas. 

TAPED! 

In discussing the whys and where- 
fores of The Last Horror Rhn last 
month, I mentioned how it appeared 
to have evolved from an interview I 
had in Cannes last year with Caroline 
and Judd when, admittedly, 
they— and I— were still a trifle queasy 
from our first viewing of Maniac. Judd 
agreed that he — actually, we — had 
suggested the idea back then but that 
none of the unit believed him. 

OK, to help Judd prove his case and 
me win my percentage! I've been 
listening again to my old tapes. (We 
never ran the interview because 
someone else beat me to rapping with 
Caroline). None of us liked Maniac 
(which I gather was not the rather 
better edited version now on release 
around the world), and the chat went 
down like this . . . 

Carolino: What did you think? 
Crawlay ; Judd's too big for me to say. 
He's the co-producer after all! 
Caroline: Oh no, please say. Please do 
say.., 

Crawlay: I hated it! But there's an 
audience out there for this kind of 
blood-soaked film, we all know that— 
otherwise nobody would put the 
money up to make it. 

Jadd: What you've said is something 
interesting ... I'm amazed there is an 
audience. I wouldn't go to see that 
film, even though I paid a pretty heavy 
price for the ticket! Things that were 
important to us are knocked out of 
that him. Now it shows explicit vio- 
lence only. 

Caroline: That didn't upset me — just 
the way the violence was used. It 
didn't mean anything. In the script you 
could see why this was happening. 
Tom Savini's effects were good — I 
stayed up one night watching him at 
work. 

Jndd: Sure the effects are hne. But 
the affect is gone. Everything we 
were supporting — the fascinating 
character of the maniac, really mad 
beyond control, yet with a normal side 
that hnally did him in— aren't seen or 
explained as well as in the script. 
We've never been so badly affected 
by a him. We couldn't sleep last night. 
I woke up this morning and decided 
not to defend it. I would take the loss. 
Except I found buyers at my door. 
Everyone wants the him. 

Crawley: Because there is. tragically, 
an audience for it. What you should do 
is make a movie about them . . . 

Judd: You're right! Maniac is a tod 
piece of blood and gore. We'll have a 
big success from an audience that 
shouldn't exist. Now I'd like to make a 
him about that audience . . . you know, 
they think this guy's a freak . . . 
Crawlay: What about them! 

Jadd: Exactly. 


6 




£ampnedbY tmtY^mwteyA 


And thafs roughly what Caroline 
and Judd's new movie is about— as 
the ultimate horror fan starts killing* 
people who dig (and make) horror 
movies. 

Just send my cut along to the 
office. Judd 


the canny Irvin Shapiro who handles 
foreign sales on George Romero's 
movies. Subject? "When people are 
pushed to the brink," explains Bill 
Lustig, "there's hell to pay . . 
Autobiographical perhaps? 


MANIAC II? 

Ironically, while Caroline and Joe 
were filming in the streets, their 
audience included their Maniac 
director, ex-pomo director William 
Lustig. He had a new film to flog — not 
that he's made it yet it won't be 
finished until March— but that's the 
way it goes in Cannes. The title is 
Vigilania and it was being sold on the 
strength of Lustig's Maniac name by 


THE WORST? 

But the worst is yet to come . . . 
Among the finished films Alexander 
Beck was selling from his stand in the 
Palais building was a charming little 
item named Bloodsucking Freaks. 
Joel Reed shot it in ghoul-o-vision 
and the result comes with a built-in 
warning: "This film contains scenes of 
a gross and disgusting nature and if 
you're not disgusted, then you should 
see a shrinkl" 



Above: Th» A/axsnder B»ck/Jo0l R»»d offering. Bloodsucking Freaks. 
The first film shot in Ghoui-o-Vision. Reeiiy feties, must you? 


PROMNIGHTII 

Prom Night meets The Island in a Blue 
Lagoon . . . That just about sums up 
the contents of Paul Lynch's next re- 
lease. The Graduation Party. His cast 
of youngsters (headed by Kathy 
McCallen, who has already survived 
Evilspaak, and Sandy Christopher, es- 
caping one Fantasy Wand for 
another) survive a seaplane crash en 
route to a weekend prom party on a 
private island retreat. They end up- 
very wet— on a desert isle, where 
soon enough Joe Spinell, with his 
new Cannes tan, and John Quaid (from 
Clint Eastwood's Any Which Way You 


Can) arrive as a pair of tequila-drunk 
drug-dealers who set abwt raping 
and torturing the kids. They kill one, as 
well. 

The movie is one of three Hemdale 
feature which started rolling early in 
June to stave off the effects of the 
upcoming directors' strike. After 
Croepshow (see last month), Tha 
Graduation Party had the next best 
poster in Cannes. And Hemdale's own 
International Times publicity news- 
paper had the biggest mistake. It 
named the film's director as Elephant 
Man's David Lynch instead of Prom 
Night's Paul Lynch. That's called 
having ideas above your station . . . 



0^''^5 iatk)N 

PARTY 


PKKM 

Till: 

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Hl.\l 

s< 

SA\|)KM«H \M) 

P\i I U V H 

IMP 

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PRINCIPAL PHOTCKiRAPliV COMMKNCtSU 'NK iSih. 


Above: Tony Crewiey's vote for the second best edvertising ert et this 
yeer's Cennes Film Fest. The winner wes. of course, EC ertist 
Jeck Kemen's stunning homege to the EC Comics, for the King/ 
Romero movie Creapthow, printed in this column lest month. 


MALI 

MURDERS 

I don't like to thumb-down a film be- 
fore it's made, but Hemdale's other 
big number currently before the 
cameras is not as good as it first 
sounds. Iha Mall reminds one of 
Romero's mall setting in Dawn a( the 
Dead, and suggests one of those lone 
nuts with a rifle atop a tower, 
shooting the poor innocents below, as 
in Targets, and far too often in reelity. 


It's none of these, but more in 
keeping with Friday Thu IM (again?l) 
with a bunch of youngsters Iwving an 
all-night party in a shopping mall and 
being wasted there, instead of around 
ye olde camp-fire. 

The sales pitch is good ("shopping 
at the mall is murdar") but as familiar 
as such malls are these days. I'm sure 
the title will be changed on release. 

It's not frightening enough. George 
Cosmatos, the Greek but now 
Canadian director, disagrees. The 
mall background is so similar world- 
wide that I expect moviegoers from m- 


7 



tmmsnCmnE, 


Bangkok to Kyoto to Helsinki to 
Naples to be equally familiar with such 
complexes and thus to experience the 
same kind of shocks and terror from 
the action drama they'll be watching. 
The setting will be like another actor 
in the picture.” 

The chief character, uncast as we 
went to press, is your typical movie 
horror movie killer. Just out of a 
mental institution, after stabbing his 
parents to death as a kiddy, he sets up 
home in the displays of a large depart- 
mental store. From here he stalks his 
chosen victim and does away with 
them, hiding all the evidence. On the 
night of the youngsters' party in the 
mall, he has a fine old time . . . killing 
one victim in the lingerie department 
and decapitating a lad in the bowling 
alley. I just can't help feeling I've seen 
it all before . . . 

Cosmatos, assistant director on 
Exodas and Zorba the Greek, later got 
...to the making of Low Grade rubbish 
like The Cassandra Crossing and 
Escape to Athena. I'm not too struck 
on him either. But he says he intends 
using unusual camera techniques, in- 
cluding micro lenses, to "get in on my 
characters atmosphere, and thus 
create further frightening visual ex- 
periences.” Lotsa luck. 

But change the title. How about . . . 
Check Oet? 



RATS RETURN 

It's been some years now since we 
enjoyed the adventures of Ben and 
Willard (Harrison Ford still insists he 
didn't name his sons after the films). 
Now their kin are on their way back . . . 
Golden Harvest, the M^aforce 
people, are preparing a juicy little 
shocker item called— The Rats. They 
won't, I gather, be big monster rats. 
They don't need to be. Rats are 
menacing enough as they are, 
breeding so rapidly that one pair can 
produce 15,000 offspring in a single 
year. They've also become in- 
creasingly immune to our poisons and 
have even survived in atomic test 
areas where all other life was des- 
troyed. Says Tom Gray of Golden 
Harvest, "The greatest single threat 
to the continued existence of man on 
this planet is rats.” 



SUPER FLIGHT 

The entire Supie ethos of "you'll 
believe a man can fly" came into 
stunning perspective in the Swiss 
entry in the festivars competition, 
Alain Tanner's wondrous Light Years 
Away. This could be termed science 
fiction, since it's set in "nowhere" 
after the third world war in the year 
2000 (but that's mainly because the 
young man in the film is called Jonas 
and is 25 and Tanner once made a 
movie called Jonas Who Will bo 25 in 
the Year 2000). It can definitely be 
classed as fantasy — a fable, in fact, a 
new found version of the sorcerer and 
the apprentice, taken from Danile 
Odier's book. La Voio Sauvage, about 
an old hermit (a Merlin, if you will) who 
wants to fly like the birds. And does 
sol 

We don't actually see Trevor 
Howard take off and flap his enormous 


wings up into the heavens. That 
would not only have been too ex- 
pensive for such an intimate movie, 
but totally unnecessary. Unlike 
Michael Crawford in Disney's 
Condorman, we don't need to see him 
fly. The way Tanner weaves his gem of 
a tale— the meticulous manner in 
which Howard and Mick Ford play it — 
we simply believe . . . 

The film was shot in English in 
Ireland— "Daniel Ddier told me I had a 
strong chance of finding that 
'nowhere' in Ireland and it was love at 
first sight,” says Tanner. It's the kind 
of movie that usually plays the 
Academy Cinema in London and the 
best art-houses in any country. It'll 
most likely turn up at the London and 
New York festivals and everywhere 
else's and really should not be missed. 
It says more about life, love and fan- 
tasy than half a dozen Jaws, Maniacs 
or even Supermans. 


ISRAEL SF 


Science fiction, of the more definite 
article, is on the way from, of all 
places, Israel. Well, it's true to say 
that Israel has a thriving film industry, 
and some fine directors— notably the 
actress-turned helmer, Michael Bat- 
Adam. But Israeli sf . . . It does tend to 
make the mind boggle Thirtieth 
Century Films is the Tel Aviv combine 



Above: A scene from the Isreali 
made feature Massage from the 
Future, starring Joseph Bee 
(see Israeli SFJ, 



MASK RIDER 

Missing from the Cannes scene — el 
least I never stumbled across it, and it 
had been promised— was the super- 
duper gleaming white speedy (Honde) 
bike of Japan's top comic-strip hero. 
The Moon Mask Rider. For the last 
quarter-century, the white uniform, 
muffler, mask and white-edged sun- 
glasses of this character have been 
more popular than Superman for 
Japanese kids. When he was trans- 
ferred from comics to television, he 
won a 65% rating and emptied streets 
and play areas. Now director Yukihiro 
Sawada is hoping to do the same — but 
world-wide— with the first Rider 
movie. It all depends on the dubbing, 
matey ... j 

A certain Daisuke Kuwabara (and 
assorted stunters) wears sculptor 
Setsu Asakura's flashy costumes and 
rides designer Takuya Yura's bike, 
developed over six months from a 
750cc Honda into a I50mph machine, 
packed with gadgetry from ultra rays 
to radar. The bike alone cost 10,000 
dollars, and executive producer is 


very insistent that the assorted 
weaponry is for defence purposes 
only. What else? 

The movie, based on the executive 
producer Kohan Kawauchi's novel, 
pits our, or rather their, hero against 


the crazed leader of a religious cult 
which turns impressionable young- 
sters into his slaves. He rules them 
with his heavies known as The Red 
Masks Their motto: The end justifies 
the means. Old Moon Mask doesn't 
agree with such sentiments. When 
the Reds rob benks, he zooms in, 
around and above them, snatching 
back the cash-boxes and returning 
them— minus 10% for the poor. Oh, 
he's a shining white knight, this hero. 
Agile, too. Jumping on to helicopter 
struts. Tackling the big bad villain all 
on his ownsome . . . with the bike 
parked around the comer. (Mustn't 
damage that, at 10,000 a throwl) 

With a major merchandising cam- 
paign behind it— from ordinary bikes 
to schoolbags, records and books to 
jeans and tee-shirts— Nippon Herald 
Films are out to conquer the world 
with their masked hero. The East, at 
least. He's not such an easy Rider for 
other territories, I would have 
thought. Though if that directors' 
strike hits hard from July onward, a lot 
of big companies will be short of pro- 
duct soon after the summer ... so you 
never know. 


8 





» • 




CARRADINE, 

PERE 

My apologies to John Carradine In 
the rush of writing last month's first 
column report on Cannes '81, I men- 
tioned he had two films being touted 
around the festival market. I should 
have known better. His total was 
four— New Zealand's Scarecrow, 
America's Deathouse and Dark Eyas, 
and Ken Hartford's Monstroid. which 
is exactly the xind of U S. film to make 
Jack Arnold hurry up and get his 
Creature From The Black Lagoon re- 
make on the move again, just to show 
all these other shoot-first, edit-later 
guys how it's done. (If Arnold's re- 
make plans with Universal reach 
fruition. John Landis will be directing, 
he tells me). 




behind Message from the Future, 
which we hope to be looking at in 
greater detail in a few months' time. 
David Avidan is the writer-director of 
the ingenious time-travel drama in 
which a messenger from the year 3005 
travels back to 1965 with an odd mis- 
sion. He has to convince modern-day 
leaders to advance World War Three 
to help produce "a better future". 


LIEUTARDALA 

Buck Rogers may have been axed 
from tv, but Pamela Hensley is still 
around— and up to her pretty nosein a 
string of photographic model murders 
in a just finished American movie 
which owes something to Michael 
Powell's Peeping Tom. Like an 
apology, perhaps . . . We'll know after 
August 1, when writer-director 
William Byron Hillman's Double 
Exposure is first released in the US. 

Gorgeous Pam is not among the 
potential victims. In a nice twist of 
casting, the ex-Princess Ardala of the 
25th Century is Lieut Fontain — the cop 
in charge of the puzzling case. 

Chief suspect is played by film's 
co-producer Michael Callan (also 
Chuck Colson in Martin Sheen's Blind 
Ambition series about Watergate). At 
least, he suspects himself in the sus- 
penser. He's a top photographer 
beset by recurring nightmares— 
premonitions of himself murdering his 


beautiful models. James Stacy, the 
personable young actor, who lost an 
arm and a leg. but not his career, in a 
motor-cycle accident some years 
back, is well cast as Callan's brother— 
he's almost a Callan clone. 

And the Mickey Powell touch? Well 
as Pam Hensley pieces the clues from 
several bloodthirsty murders to- 
gether, she finds a common denomi- 
nator. A print is left at each murder 
scene. Not a finger or foot print — but 
that of a camera's tripod. The killer is 
obviously taking pictures of his vic- 
tims as they are dying . . . 

FINALE 

One fact about the Cannes film festival 
remains obvious to all — including the 
Americans. Cannes will not die. Not as 
long as it keeps on its best behaviour 
as this year— and makes ready its new 
Sunday-best clothing befitting its age 
and size. The re-organisation of all 
events was much improved: no 
scrambles or fist-fights to get into 
theatres to actually see the films, for a 
change. And with the new Palais buil- 
ding on its way up for a semi-opening 
in '82 and completion by '85, the town, 
itself, is working hard to stick around 
as the site of the world's hugest 
cinema event for another 34 years or 
more to come. 

For once, even the starlets, or 
would-be starlets, on the Carlton 
beach were getting signed up for 
movies. Well, for that movie anyway. 
Among the bevy of beauties bikining 
their way into The Last Horror Film 
was a blonde American named Annie 
Ample. That she was. She makes Dolly 
Parton look like Twiggy. 

What? Dh yes, this year you could 
get a change out of a fiver for two 
cokes. Or you could if you caught the 
right waiter. I bought two simple 
beers on the Hotel Carlton terrace 
one night. A stupid move. They cost 
me ... £4. I shot back to the main 
Press haunt, known as the Petit 
Carlton. Petit prices, too. Two beers 
there cost 50p . . . and Sam Neill even 
bought his own. Nice fella ... for a 
Damien. 

As for those 500 films over fourteen 
days, I managed to catch 52 of them. 
But then, I was also into 32 interviews 
over the same period. That's Cannes 
for you. Organised or otherwise, it's 
one mad, wonderful cine-circus. Two 
weeks without sleep! ^ 


Above: Pamela Hensley and the cast (of suspects) from Walter 
Byron Hillman's DoubI* Expoujre. 


HONG KONG 
HORROR 

Also in need in deft sales- 
manship — and dubbing — is the grue- 
some horror movie from producer Run 
Run Shaw in Hong Kong. Unlike 
Raymond Chow, Shaw is still very 


much into the chop-socky routine, 
with the occasional breakaway like . 
Corpse Mania. A good enough title for 
overseas sales, I suppose. But the 
names of the characters in director 
Kuei Chih Hung's movie (of his actors 
too . . . Wang Yung and Tanny) will 
cause problems unless they're 
Westernised. This is more or less a 


Jack The Ripper yarn, with a whole 
series of murders of prostitutes, or 
"courtesans", it says here. As to who- 
dunnit, let me offer you a muddling 
example of the possiliilities from the 
Cannes synopsis; "Chang tells Hu that 
Li has a motive. Lan has cheated him 
out of much money ." Ah so ... ! 









KUPEDLER 

■ J 

6 « - 1927-1981 


T he man who created the classic 

television series Ooomwatch has died, 
aged 53. 

Dr Kit Pedler trained in the medical field. He 
gained a PhD for work on the causes of a 
retinal disease and published nearly forty 
papers about vision and the eye. Later, he 
created and headed the University of 
London's electron microscopy department. 
He became interested in how the brain 
processed visual information and this led to 
his computer simulation of nerve cells. His 
first television work was on Doctor Who: with 
Gerry Davies, he co-created those 
emotionless scientific villains, the Cybermen. 

Pedler and Davies then went on to co- 
create the highly-popular Ooomwatch series 
(1970) for BBC tv. The programme looked at 
the scientific and moral dilemmas faced by a 
government-funded group of scientists who 
monitored "advances" and catastrophes in 
the scientific community and their effect on 
the world at large. It struck a chord in those 
conservationist times. Writer Dennis 
Spooner, who scripted three of the episodes, 
says in upcoming Starfourst interview: 

"Kit Pedler had worked for the government. 
He kept wandering into scientific 
establishments and coming out with armfuls 
of files marked Top Secret. It scared me to 
death; the episodes were based on truth. I 
wrote one about nerve gas leakage from the 
English Channel." Ooomwatch was also 
successful as soap opera. It made a star out of 
Robert Powell, who played young heart-throb 
Toby Wren. There was showed disbelief 
when the character was killed while trying to 
defuse a bomb in the final episode of the first 
series. 

When Ooomwatch ended. Kit Pedler went 
on to write five radio series about scientific 
concepts and two radio plays: Trial By Logic 
and Sunday Lunch. He also made a 
considerable contribution to television 
documentaries with The Eye for BBC tv's 
Horizon series and programmes on 
cybernetics and artificial intelligerKe for ITV. 
He died while working on the final 
programme of Thames TV's recent Mind 
Over Matter. Pedler had spent three years 
researching the series, which examined 
paranormal happenings such as metal- 
bending, faith-healing, extra-sensory 
perception and out-of-body experiences. He 
wrote a related book (Mind Over Metter, pub. 
Thames Methuen) and had been planning 
another Thames series Living Without Oii. 

He will be missed. A 


Top: Doctor Kit Poditr. Far left: Kit Pedler, 
producer Terence Dudley end writer Gerry 
Deviet pote for e publicity photo for BBC's 
Ooomwatch. Left: Behind the scenes during the 
recording of the Tanth Planet serie! of Doctor 
Who. 


) 


10 





,o»' . cenO^ 


a-*?? «o^ ^ 

4 ‘->v*« ' V V 




DAY 

Cf 

THE 

TRIFFIDS 

Report by John Fleming 


i n Starfourst 18, producer David 
Maloney said he was going to make 
John Wyndham's classic Day of the 
Triffids into a BBC tv serial. Now, at long last, 
he has managed it. 

Back in 1979, he commissioned a script 
from writer/actor Douglas Livingstone 
(currently playing Gimli in BBC Radio’s Lord 
of the Rings). The new Day of the Triffids was 
supposed to be shot and shown in 1980, but 
the money was not available to make it. 

This year, the money has been found 
through a three-way co-financing deal 
between BBC tv, the Australian Broadcasting 
Commission and the RC7V cable network in 
America. The RCTV network is co-owned by 
the Rockerfeller Centre and RCA; in December 
1 980, they signed a deal which gave them first 
option on all BBC productions for the next ten 
years. This effectively means that Day of the 
Triffids will not be shown on any of the three 
major broadcast networks in the US. 

The Triffids deal is complicated because 
two versions of the serial are being made. The 
BBC will show Day of the Triffids in six 26- 


minute episodes; ABC and RCTV will screen it 
in three 50-minute episodes. There should be 
no major script-losses because, although 
Douglas Livingstone was commissioned to 
write six episodes, he was aware as long ago 
as November 1979 that these might be re- 
edited to 50-minute versions. 

David Maloney says that he and the BBC 
struggled so long to get the programme on 
the screen: "Because the adaptation was so 
successful. We just felt it really had to be 
made. We've kept very close to the original 
book, although we haven't set it in the early 
1950s. If we had set it in that period, I think it 
would have — to use a triffid phrase — taken 
the sting out of it. We want to make it as if it 
could happen tomorrow. I think it's right to 
update it and it works. 

"As we’ve been making it," say Malon(‘y, 
"We've found it a very, very stark and 
frightening story. Because the novel is dated 
in the early 1950s, that somehow effaces the 
starkness of the story — the catastrophe" 
aspect. Douglas has done a very good job of 
updating it and because the story now 



i 


Above: Director Ken Hannam (third from the left in 
the sheepskin coat) with the crew of Day of the 
Triffids. Left: Director Ken Hannam (right) discusses 
progress with a crew member. Opposite top; Star John 
Duttine as Bill Masen. Note the Triffid Gun. Opposite; 
The Army arrives on the scene. Opposite below: John 
Duttine as Bill Masen. 



happens 'next year', with all the parallels of 
national catastrophe that we're thinking 
about, it has a certain frightening quality. 
We've set out to make it as realistic as 
possible and parts of it are pretty 
nightmarish." Perhaps because of that, the 
likely transmission time will be 8.30 pm — 
much later than Doctor Who or even Blake's 
7, thus theoretically depriving the serial of 
some of its younger viewers. 

The programme's visual effects were 
originally going to be designed by Ian 
Scoones but, during the production delay, he 
left the BBC to handle effects for ITC's 
Hammer House of Horror series. So the task 
of creating the triffids fell to Steve Drewett, 
who had previously worked with David 
Maloney on the third Blake's 7 series. (We 
have been asked not to publish pictures of the 
triffids before transmission, but we will carry 
an article including design-sketches and 
behind-the-scenes shots once the triffids 
have appeared on screen). 

The effects, given the nature of the story, 
are not a particularly large item on the 


programme budget. What has upped the 
budget, according to Maloney, is; "It's just a 
very fragmented story (shot 55% on film and 
45%on videotape). It moves around 
everywhere. In that sense, it's very expensive 
to make. We start in the hospital and then 
move on and on through set after set. There’s 
no continuity of sets or actors through the 
various episodes." 

There are three central characters literally 
running through the story. Starring as triffid 
farmer Bill Masen is John Outline, whom 
Maloney directed several years ago in an 
episode of the police series Softly Softly and 
whom he now describes as "probably one of 
the hottest acting properties in Britain today." 
Outline's performances include John the 
Evangelist in Jesus of Nazareth, the husband 
in award-winning tv-movie Spend, Spend, 
Spend, the schoolmaster in To Serve Them 
All My Days and Donald Radlett in The 
Mallens. 

Co-starring as heroine Josella Payton is 
fairly unknown actress Emma Relph (the 
daughter of film producer Michael Relph) 


who recently played a 'papal groupie' in the 
Polish feature film From a Far Place. 

The third central character is villain Jack 
Coker played by Maurice Colbourne, star of 
BBC tv's Gangsters series and a co-founder of 
London's Half Moon Theatre. (He also had the 
misfortune to appear in Hawk the Slayer). 

Trying to hold all these disparate elements 
together is director Ken Hannam, who has 
divided his professional life between Britain 
and Australia, mainly in episodic television 
such as Dr Finlay's Casebook, Z-Cars, The 
Onedin Line and The Assassination Run, but 
also finding time to direct four feature films; 
the award-winning Sunday Too Far Away 
(1973), Break of Day (1976), Summerhill 
(1977) and DawnI (1978). 

Day of the Triffids is scheduled for autumn 
transmission and, although it is heavily- 
weighted towards dramatic realism at the 
expense of fantasy, it should be worth 
watching, especially for the film camera work 
of Peter Hall, whose BBC credits include War 
and Peace, Rebecca, Dracula and Dr Jekyll & 
Mr Hyde. 0 






in 











13 




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I e knows you're alone so don't 
answer the phone when a stranger 
calls - it could be a psycho. It 
isn't Halloween or Prom Night but Wait 
Until Dark and the Blind Terror might 
begin. 

All these and more are at the roots of 
Eyes of a Stranger although the biggest 
influence of the lot is clearly John 
Carpenter's 1978 tv movie Someone is 
Watching Me, (which in turn was inspired 
by Hitchcock's Rear Window). 

A "phone-freak" is homing in on 
lonely girls living alone in Miami, 
assaulting and killing them. A local tv 
newsreader, who lives with her deaf, 
dumb and blind sister, starts to suspect a 
man in the neighbouring tower block, 
whose apartment is in line with hers. Her 
suspicions are confirmed when she breaks 
into his apartment and finds some vital 
evidence. So what does she do? Go to the 
police like she has been imploring her 
viewers to do at the slightest arousal of 
suspicion? No, of course not — (there 
wouldn't be any story otherwise, would 
there?) she starts to give him a taste of 
his own medicine by anonymously 
telephoning him with the threat of 
discovery. But he recognises her voice 
from a newscast and begins to close in on 
her defenceless sister . . . 

I honestly think I've said all there is to 
say.about this sort of movie now. This is 
just downright illogical and stupid and 
isn't going to fool anyone with its 
cobbled-together synthesis of other 
«|||^'s ideas. Jhe perfunctorily built 
$NPM(se has had all the edge taken off it 
by the severe curtailment of Tom Savini's 
gore effects in this country. As the film 
really only has sexual sadism on its mind 
pierhaps this is a blessing in disguise. 

There is also little to say about using a 
handicapped victim as a plot device — it 
isn't frightening as thoughtlessly 
intended, just distasteful in context. 

Director Ken Wiederhom has only 
directed one other film that I know of, 
the eerily atmospheric Almost Human 
(the retitled Shock Waves starring Peter 
Cushing as the head of a band of Nazi 
zombies), scenes of which flicker on a 
television set during the early part of the 
film and only serve as an unfortunate 
reminder that he really is slumming it 
with this factory line example of higher- 
budgeted trash. A 


Eyes of a Stranger (1981) 

Lauren Tewes (as Jane), Jennifer Jason Leigh 
(Tracy), John Di Santi (Stanley Herbert), Peter 
DuPre (David), Gwen Lewis (Debbie), Kitty 
Lunn (Annette), Timothy Hawkins (Jef(), Ted 
Richert (Roger England), Toni Crabtree (Mona), 
Bob Small (Dr Bob), Stella Rivera (dancer), Dan 
Fitzgerald (bartender) , Jose Bahamande 
(Jimmy), Rhonda Flynn (woman in car), Tony 
Frederico (man in car). 

Directed by Ken VVeiderhom, Screenplay by 
Mark Jackson and Eric L. Bloom, Edited by 
Rick Shaine, Music by Richard Einhorn. 

Director of photography Mini Rojas, Art 
director Jessica Sack, Special make-up effects 
Tom Savini, Associate producer Roslyn M. 
Meyer, Produced by Ronald Zerra. 

Time: 83 mins 


Cert: x 



W hen I heard that Bond producer 
Cubby Broccoli had taken the 
criticism of Moonraker to heart and 
was going to try a different approach to For 
Your Eyes Only, cutting back on the humour 
among other things, I was very pleased. I was 
even more pleased when director John Glen 
told me that From Russia With Love was his 
favourite Bond and that he was trying to get 
that same quality into the new Bond, even 
though I had my doubts that he would 
achieve this. Time, after all, has moved on 
from when From Russia With Love was made 
and the Bond series has changed drastically 
over the years. Would audiences who have 
grown accustomed to Bond movies of the 
1970s with their faster tempo and almost 
complete detachment from reality, accept a 
throwback in style and approach to the Bond 
of 19637 More importantly, would Broccoli 
risk his usual hugh profits by giving the public 
something different from ^at they 
expected? 

Well, For Your Eyas Only is certainly 
different from Moonraker in many respects 
but it is no From Russia With Love. Instead of 
going all the way back to 1963 I'd say the 
makers stopped at 1973 as the film FYEO 
most resembles in style and approach is Live 
and Let Die, though more money has 
obviously been lavished on FYEO and it's 
definitely superior to the former film in terms 
of technical quality. FYEO may lack the 
slapstick elements of Moonraker, along with 
the science fiction hardware, the giant sets 
and Jaws, but it has none of the mood of 
From Russia With Love. One of the reasons 
for this has to do with the subject of plot. For 
Your Eyes Only doesn't have one . . . 

If you look at From Russia With Love you'll 
see that it has a solidly constructed storyline 
which, of course, owes much to the original 
Fleming novel— the first part of the film 
shows SPECTRE setting up the scheme that is 
designed to destroy Bond and discredit the 
Secret Service; the middle section deals with 
Bond blithely walking into the trap to obtain 
the bait (the cypher machine and the girl) and 
the third section consists of one long chase as 
Bond attempts to avoid the closing teeth of 
the trap, just barely managing to overcome 
every obstacle SPECTRE can put in his way. 
The film thus has a built-in momentum as the 
plot develops and the pace quickens with 
each change of the narrative gear. 

There are no such changes of gear in For 
Your Eyes Only because there is no plot to be 
developed and though there are plenty of 
moments of high excitement they are all on 
the same emotional level. At the end of the 
film you don't feel that you have travelled 
from A to C (or to B) but simply gone round in 
circles. It is definitely a movie where you can 
start watching it at any point and not feel 
confused about what is going on — because 
there is nothing going on. 

As a substitute for a plot it was not enough 
to Just cobble together two of the stories from 
the For Your Eyes Only anthology and then 
frame it with a vague storyline about a 
missing code transmitter. Of the two themes 
taken from the short stories the revenge one 
might have worked if more attention had 
been paid to it but it gets lost along the way. 
The other problem with it is that (Parole 
Bouquet isn't very convirKing as the girl 
looking for revenge. Though extremely 
beautiful, Ms Bouquet is far from successful 
at suggesting she is a fiery half-Greek girl 
burning with a passion for vertgence. In fact I 
suspect the only way you could get a fiery 
look in those gorgeous eyes would be to hook 
her up to a 50,(XX) volt generator (Lynn Holly- 
Johnson, who plays the ice-skating nymphet, 
has much more screen presence and comes 
across as the only real person in the picture). 



PORVOUB 

JOHN BROSNAN REVIEWS THE LATEST IN THE JAMES 


Above: James Bond (Roger Moore) end Colombo (Topol) in a 
from For Your Eyes Only. Below: James Bond swings into action at 
the mansion of the assassin Gonzales. Right: A portrait of Roger 

Moore as James Bond. 


For Your Eyes Only is more realistic than 
recent Bonds in that it's less fantastic. The 
action is mainly concerned with just people 
rather than far-fetched machinery — there are 
no cars that turn into submarines or gondolas 
that turn into hovercraft (thank goodness) — 
and the villains have been similarly scaled 
down. There is no super villain this time, 
apart from Blofeld's brief appearance in the 
pre-credits sequence. Instead the chief villain, 
played by Julian Glover, is a rather ordinary, 
uninteresting character and his henchmen 
are similarly undistinguished. There is no 
equivalent to the line-up of memorable 
villains in From Russia With Love — Red 


16 


EYESONIY 



BOND SERIES WHICH STARS ROGER MOORE AS 007. 

L' 9 


Above: Jamat Bond signs an autograph for The Prime 
Minister (Janet Brown) and Dennis Thatcher (John Wells). 
Below: Carole Bouquet plays Melirta. Bottom: Roger 
Moore with his Lotus car. 



Grant, Rosa Klebb, Kronsteen and SPECTRE 
itself. Micliael Gotfiard as Loque has 
possibilities but they are not developed by 
the script In fact his only line in the picture is 
"Arrrghhhhh" as he goes over a cliff. 
Similarly unexploited is the KGB agent 
Kreigler (John Wyman). 

Also lacking is the customary Big Climax— 
instead we just get a rather routine fight on 
top of a mountain between two small groups, 
though admittedly the build-up to this limp 
climax involves some quite amazing 
mountaineering stunts. 

While I agree that Broccoli was right in 
trying to change direction after the 


absurdities of Moonraker I think that the 
larger-than-life villains and the Big Climax 
were two Bond traditions he could have left 
untouched. As it is you feel there is 
something missing from For Your Eyes Only. 

And if Broccoli had really wanted to 
toughen up Bond and bring back an element 
of realism to the series the first thing he 
should have done was get a replacement for 
Roger Moore. This is Moore’s fifth time in the 
role yet I still can't take him seriously as 
Bond — and as a result I can’t take the 
situations he’s involved in seriously either. 
Moore is basically a light comedy actor and 
this persona works against any attempt to 
intrc^uce an atmosphere of ’realism’ into the 
film. 

Also at odds with the less far-fetched style 
of most of For Your Eyes Only are the jokey 
opening and end sequences. The former has 
Bond trapped in a helicopter controlled by 
none other than Blofeld (in a wheelchair and 
neckbrace, and also bald again, looking like 
he’s come straight from the climax of On Her 
Majesty’s Secret Service — which suggests 
that a// the Blofelds in the subsequent 
Diamonds Are Forever vsete imposters) who 
ends up being dropped down a giant 
chimney. The closing episode is worse — it 
features Mrs Thatcher, impersonated by ‘ 
Janet Brown, and husband Denis (John 
Wells). K got a lot of laughs at the press show 
but I suspect it’s going to look awfully dated 
and embarrassing in a very short time. 

But in spite of all that there’s still a lot to 
enjoy in the movie. The action sequences are 
brilliantly handled, in particular all the skiing 
scenes, the mountaineering footage and the 
episode lifted from the novel of Live And Let 
Die where Bond and the girl are towed behind 
the villain’s boat and dragged at high speed 
over coral to attract the sharks. The other 
underwater scenes, including the battle 
between the submersibles, are impressive 
technically but tend to slow the film down. 
And as usual the film itself is about 10-15 
minutes too long. 

Veteran stunt arranger Bob Simmons 
succeeds in making the fight scenes seem 
fresh and inventive yet again and even gets a 
walk-on part (he’s the one who gets blown up 
by Bond’s booby-trapped car), and Derek 
Meddings’ special effects are also as 
impressive as ever, especially his model 
shots which are impossible to spot (I am 
reliably imformed that part of the opening 
helicopter sequence involved models; the 
Albanian hartxjur front that gets blown up 
was a model and that models were used in 
some of the underwater scenes but I detected 
none of them). 

Considered as a series of almost 
unconnected action set-pieces— a sort of 
anthology of stunt scenes from previous 
Bonds— then For Your Eyes Only is 
undeniably entertaining but it’s a shame it 
was prevented from being anything more 
than that by a badly misconceived script. Part 
of the blame goes to the new script writer 
Michael Wilson, a former tax lawyer who is 
also Broccoli’s step-son. He writes better 
dialogue than Christopher Wood (thankfully 
the awful double-entendres of Spy Who 
Loved Me and Moonraker are missing) but 
doesn’t seem to have much idea about how to 
construct a satisfying story-line. Not that he 
deserves all the blame — in Screen 
International it was revealed that: "Although 
he (Wilson) and Richard Maibaum receive the 
screenplay credit it was he and producer 
Cubby Broccoli who prepared the story and 
then Maibaum came up with a plot." 

That explains a lot. When you realize that 
they came up with the "story" first and then 
the plot you can understand why For Your^ 
Eyes Only turned out the way it did. ^ 


17 



Right: Ktvin (Craig (A|iwocl<) uMiiB in hii 
bedroom, armed with nm Polaroid camera, for 
tha Knight in Armour to appear out of hit 
wardrobe II). Balow: Ralph Richardson plays 
the tupreme Being - God to hit friends. Belowl 
M1B BUchaal Palin and Shelley Duvall play tfig 
krarr^/r couple, Vioeant and Pansy. 


Review by Alan Jones 


very once in a while a film comes 
along that knocks you for six. I 
had no idea that Tima Bandits 
would be anything more than a live 
action variant on Monty Pythonait^oa 


pseudo-animation and as such, I really 
wasn't looking forward to it. The opening 
minutes almost compounded that 
preconceived opinion with its overstated 
lampooning of a slightly futuristic 
consumer society — but then, as the main 
ingenious story took hold — I realised I 
was watching fantasy film making of the 
highest order. Witty, highly imaginative, 
frightening — a totally original entertain- 


ment that doesn't fit into any category I 
can think of. It was the moment when 
the six dwarves burst through Kevin's 
wardrobe and push his bedroom wall into 
the Napoleonic Wars . . . 

I'd better explain more fully. The 
Supreme Being, (God to those who know 
him well enough), as we all know created 
the Universe in six days. Not much when 
you think about it and as a result a few 



18 










; Left: David Warner gives perhaps the best 

• performance of The J'lme ^n6\ts as Evil 
\penius. Below left: The Time Bandits of the 
Xtitle pose with their map of the holes in the 
Universe while Kevin (Craig Wamock, out of 

• t frame) joapj a po/a/-oi£/p/cfu/-e. Below 
■* right: John Cleese gives a typically adept 
performance as an upper class Robin Hood, 
■* who bears an uncanny resemblance to 

■ . Prince Philip. 


get away from his 
parents finds 

Polaroid camera, tfrsiti^^alvT3H|E& 
Napoleonic victory, masting a 
Robin Hood than legend would htwo^' 
believe, (played by John Cleese — say nti 
more!), helping Agamemnon de^t the 
Minotaur in ancient Greece, and much 


flaws in its fabric are to be expected. A t 
blueprint of these holes in time and space ; 
has been given to six dwarves who are | 
supposed to be repairing them but instead 
they are misusing the map to greedily 
plunder the treasures of past, present, 
future, mythic, legendary and fantastic 
Kingdoms. One of the time holes is i 


wishes, decide to pursue the Most 
i Fabulous Object in the World, a decision 
eads them to the nightmarish 
Fortress of Ultimate Darkness where they 
eventually confront absolute Evil with an 
army concocted from different time 
' zones. This spectacular battle of Knights, 

I Archers, Cowboys, tanks and spacecraft 


situated in 1 1 year old Kevin's wardrobe i more. All this time travelling comes to a ' ends with a final, all-meaningful 

and one night, while going early to bed to I halt when the band, much against Kevin's ' appearance from the Supreme Being. But ► 


19 



V 




/ 


%" 'Top left: King Agamemnon (Sean Connery) does battle veith the 

Minotaur. Top right: Shelley Duvall and Michael play the starry-eyed 
lovers Pansy and Vincent. Above left; Peter Vaughan and Katharine 
Halmond play Mr and Mrs Ogre. Above^ighf. The Time Bandits 
attempt to escape Irom the prison cage o! Evil Genius. Right Ian 
gives a memorable pertormance as Napoleon, whojjeheves that hai^t 
makes the man. Far right. Oavid mirner, in gas mask, as Evil Genius. 



Evil has one last card to play/ and tfie I been fully realised. I didn’t particularly correct proportions of mystery and 

moral twist in this tale - The Wizard of j like his Monty' Python films or irreverent humour. 1 1 takes you from the 

Oz for the ’SOs - is light yearS away from Jabberwocky, the latter being all style sublirne to the ridiculous and back again, 

the message "There's no place like , and nosubstwce Well, Time Bandits has* dften in the san^ frame. There is a 

HQme" I style alright, (Gilliam is helped yet again calculated risk that this treatment might 

Time Bandits literally does "burst with : by production designer Milly Burns who j alienate the audience and I do have to 

inventiveness" as the pressbook says. I was art director on Jabberwocky), and f. ^mit to being in a minority in rny 
couldn't have put it better myself, it sums cornucopia of substance co scripted by ■ passionate regard for this movie but even 
the film up superbly. Director Terry himself and Michael Palin. They have thrv dissenters have to concede that it has 

Gilliam's flair for the fantastic has now created a dark parable laced with the i an extraordinary fascination, like it or 




Th« Time Bandits (1981) 

Crag Marnock (m Krvtn). Oavxl Rappgpoft 
IRtnOtlH, Ktfwtv Baker (ftdfitl. Jack l^vn 
IWsityt, Mik* Edmondft tOgI, Malcolm Diton 
tStfutmi, Tmv Roaa (Vermml, John Cteaae 
tfiobtn HoodI, Saon Connrrv (Kmg 
Agtm^mnonf, Shailav Duvall 
Kathanna Halmond fMn Ogrtl, tan Holm 
tNwoftoo), Michael Palin tVinnntf. Ralph 
Richardaon tSufiftme B^ngt, Patar Vaughan 
tOg^tf, David V^nar ICyil Gentusl. 

Produced and diractad bv Tarry Gilliam, 
Screenplay by Michael Palm and Tarry Ciliam, 
Director of pheto^ephy Pater Biiiou, Edited 
by Julian Doyle. Production datigner MiNi 
Burnt. Art director Norman Garwood. 
Coetumai de t iyied by Jim Acheton ai^ Haral 
Cole. Special eHacts tupervwor John Bunker. 
Aatociate producer NaviWa C Thompeon. 
Exacutiva produorry Denn O'Brien and George 
Harmon. 

Tana llOmin* Cart > 


not. A few things don’t quite come off, 
like Palin and Shelley Duvall's twice 
repeated gag about star-crossed lovers 
which looks like outtakes from tele- 
vision's Ripping Yarns, and the Mr and 
Mrs Ogre section that I was keenly antici 
pating as it featured Katherine Helmond, 
(Jessica from tv's Soap) but these are 
more than made up for Sean Connery's 
affecting role as King Agamemnon wfio 


becomes a father figure to Kevin and Ian 
Holm's wonderful portrayal of a height 
obsessed Napoleon who watches a Punch 
and Judy show while a flaming Italy tries 
in vain to surrender. 

In a film that builds surprise on 
unending surprise, the climax in the 
Fortress of Ultimate Darkness is 
stupendous — the icing on the cake. I 
doubt whether we will see imagination of 


such staggeri Abrilliance on the screen 
again for a loiAn^hile to come. How Evil, 
(played by Daw Warner in tip-top form 
as a leering, tecJLologically seduced 
dilletante), trariWQrms himself into a 
death machine, t® deals in a startlingly 
novel way with s^e attacking cowboys, 
has to be seen toAjielieved! It is one of 
the finest moment^n a film that contains 
a plethora of fine i&ments. 9 


21 






f Mm 













H igh Moon has been suggested as 
an alternative title for Outland, 
and with good reason as the 
movie is simply High Noon transposed to 
an outer space setting. Sean Connery 
plays the Marshall who has to face alone 
the hired killers arriving at his isolated 
mining community — located on one of 
Jupiter's moons — on the noon space 
shuttle. The locals, with one exception, 
refuse to help him and his young wife is 
making tracks for Earth. All that's 
missing is someone singing "Do Not For- 
sake Me O' My Darling" on the sound- 
track. 

Many years ago when the science 
fiction pulp magazines were booming, the 
fans of that era used to complain that 
many so-called sf writers were simply 
writing westerns set in outer space — 
space horse operas, which is how the term 
"space opera" came into being. Now, 
decades later, Hollywood finally catches 
on to the same idea, treating it as if it was 
the most original concept to come along 
since George Lucas invented the Force (in 
his bath, you may remember), though 
actually Hammer Films beat ^em to the 
punch back in 1969 with the bizarre 
Moon Zero Two. 

Outland is the brainchild of Peter 
Hyams who wrote and directed it. Hyams 
sprung to prominence with Capricorn 
Otte, a movie with a good central idea — 
what if NASA decided to fake a space 
shot — but which failed to take it in any 
interesting direction and instead became 
just a glossy chase thriller. Not that the 
basic idea was an original one — there are 


still people who believe that NASA's 
various moon landings were all concocted 
in a tv studio — but it's a shame Hyams 
didn't develop it more fully. Hyams' 
second movie was the ludicrous Hanover 
Street, just possibly one of the uninten- 
tionally funniest films of all time (though 
Sphinx comes a close second, and coin- 
cidentally both movies starred Lesley 
Anne Down). Hanover Street was an 
amazingly misjudged attempt to make an 
old fashioned, bitter-sweet romantic 
movie along the lines of Waterloo Bridge 
but spiced up with some modern 
cinematic conventions, such as sex and 
violence (but tasteful sex and violence). 
The result was embarrassing and I'm not 
surprised that its star, Harrison Ford, has 
so far avoided* seeing it. 

In a way Outland has the same flaws as 
Hanover Street (though it's not in the 
least funny) in that both movies are 
reworkings of older movies with very 
little in them that is actually original. The 
plot in Outland, as I said above, comes 
mainly from High Noon and the sets and 
space hardware owe a great deal to Alien. 
Sean Connery even gets to crawl through 
a ventilation system but unfortunately 
doesn't encounter any aliens along the 
way. Hyams really relies on the one single 
idea — that of juxtaposing a western story 
with a futuristic setting — to provide the 
chief source of interest for the movie. It 
all boils down to this one single gimmick, 
tricked out with a few predictable 
inversions like the hard drinking, cynical 
doctor hiding out on the frontier because 
of past failures (a familiar western 


character) being a woman instead of a 
man. Other than that Outland is 
completely devoid of surprises or 
originality . . . and as an example of 
science fiction it barely deserves the 
name. 

The point is that the sf element in 
Outland is totally unnecessary — it plays 
no part in the story and has no real 
^reason for being there, apart from the 
afore-mentioned novelty value. The film 
could just as easily have been set in South 
Africa or Australia as its theme — the 
story of a man who makes a lone stand 
against corruption — has absolutely no 
need of the science fiction trappings. 
Okay, during the big shoot-out at the end 
Connery makes use of some of the outer 
space paraphernalia to overcome his 
opponents but that isn't enough to justify 
Outlarsd as science fiction. 

Hyam's message, if I can call it that, is 
that you can forget about life in outer 
space being exciting or glamorous — or 
anything like Star Wars. Instead, he says, 
it will be dull and monotonous, especially 
if you happen to be mining titanium on 
lo, Jupiter's third moon. Living 
conditions will be cramped and the sort 
of people who will be willing to endure 
this sort of existence will be the outcasts 
of society. In short, it will be exactly like 
life in any isolated mining community, 
the only difference being that if you go 
outside without your helmet people will 
have to come after you with sponges to 
clean up the mess. 

All well and good as far as it goes — 

I'm sure the inhabitants of such a place >■ 


23 



won't wake up every nf)oming filled with 
a sense of wonder and saying to 
themselves: "Gosh, here I am on lo 
orbiting Jupiter, the mysterious gas giant 
that is the biggest planet in the solar 
system and about which we know so little 
. . . Wow!" But that doesn't mean the 
audience should feel similarly blase about 
the situation while watching Outland yet 
that is the effect the picture produces. 
There is no communication of any sense 
of wonder at all, even in the early 
establishing shots showing the above-sur- 
face section of the mine against the back- 
ground of a rather dull-looking Jupiter. 

By contrast, look at Kubrick's 2001 and 
the scenes where the Pan Am space shuttle 
is heading for the space station — Kubrick 
conveys the fact that the crew and 
passenger obviously find the experience 
commonplace and boring (they're all 
watching tv) but at the same time he 
conveys to the audience a feeling of awe 
and excitement. 

Outland is a dull movie. It is slow- 
moving and its mood remains on one 
single, monotonous note. It doesn'^t even 
liven up during the scenes of violence. 
Admittedly a lot of money and technical 
skill has gone into its making and much 
of it is visible on the screen — the sets 
look solid and real and the special effects 
are fine — but the picture rrever really 
comes to life. It remains a mechanical 
construct consisting of borrowings from 
other movies and familiar movie 'types' 
instead of flesh and blood characters. The 
cast do what they can within the 
limitations of the script — Connery is 
adequate as O'Neil, Frances Stemhagen is 
good as Dr La 2 urus and Peter Boyle is 
wasted as the villain Sheppard — but one 
fails to become involved with them. The 
characters they play are hollow ghosts 
from countless ^der films .. . 

Okay, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, 
Brian DePalma, etc, also use old movies as 
a primary source of inspiration for their 
films but they bring some extra to the 
mixture that makes their work transcend, 
or at least enhance, what has gone before. 
There is no such extra ingredient in 
Outland. It is a beautifully photographed 
facade of a real movie. 

Finally, two minor things that 
annoyed me. One is that I can't believe 
that anyone who has lived in space for 
any length of time would be so stupid as 
to blow a hole through a window 
knowing that there is nothing but a 
vacuum on the other side, which is what 
one of the villains does during the final 
shoot-out, with predictably explosive 
results. The other thing is that when we 
see men exposed to a vacuum their heads 
expand like balloons. Now this makes a 
grotesque shot but suggests that the 
human head is filled with nothing but air 
— an idea that is quite erroneous. Nasal 
and ear cavities would certainly rupture 
in such a situation but I would like to 
point out to the makers of Outland that 
the average human head is not as hollow 
as they presumably think it is. And that 
applies to the heads of audiences too. % 

Review by John Brosnan 



24 



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fl Tnipntigiit im ip hn Bait tcc 

BUSTCR auniBC 


I t seemed highly improbable that Buster 
Crabbe should be in town to promote a 
book about exercise for those afflicted 
with arthritis; at 74, he looks lively enough to 
sprint through another thirteen episodes of 
Rash Gordon or punch out some rustler in the 
B-westerns of which he made an 
impressively large number during the forties. 
Retired to Arizona now (and looking, in his 
dark glasses and heavy tan, a far more 
effective duplicate of a Mafia don than Eddie 
Constantine managed in The Long Good 


Friday) he i$ wealthy enough from his 
property investments and swimming-pool 
business to be philosophical about acting in 
general and the serials that made his name. 

"I never wanted to be an actor. I was 
studying law, and making four dollars a week 
working part-time while I did it. If I hadn't 
happened to be a tenth of a second faster than 
that Frenchman in the 1 932 Olympic 400 
metres freestyle swimming nobody in 
Hollywood would have taken any notice of 
me. But I got a gold medal and Paramount 


gave me a seven year contract with a one year 
option. It paid a hundred dollars a week. So I 
thought, if I stayed there for a year I could 
save a lot and never have to worry where the 
food was coming from. That year I put away 
$3500. 

"But I knew they were going to bounce me. 
They could get rid of me any time they 
wanted. So I kind of yakked away that first 
year; did what they told me to and was a good 
boy. They gave me a part in a jungle-type of 
thing; King of the Jungle. The only A-picture I 



Left: Oe/» Ardtn (Jean Rogart) and Flaah 
Gordon (Butter Crabbe) from the tint Flaah 
Gordon tana/, 7936. Below; A Mntascarta 
from tti» tame atrial. Ri(#it: Princau Aura 
(Pritcllla Lawton) holdi Flash Gordon's 
(Butter Crabbe) attackers at bay. Far right; 

Buster Crebbe crashes into action as Buck 
Rogers in the 1936 serial of tha same name. 


ever made, as it turned out. About the end of 
the first year I got a call from my agent one 
night, a guy by the name of Morris Small. And 
he said 'Guess what?' I said 'We got the pink 
slip, right?'. And he said 'No!' He was more 
surprised than I was. I never thought they'd 
keep me on." 

Crabbe first heard of Flash Gordon through 
Alex Raymond's strip. "When it came out in 
1934, 1 started to follow it — find out what 
Ming was doing; Dale and the Clay Men and 
so on. One day in 1936, 1 happened to see in 
the Hollywood Reporter, right at the bottom 
of the page, a little squib announcing that 
Universal Studios were going to make a serial 
of 'Alex Raymond's popular comic strip Flash 
Gordon', and that if anyone was interested in 
trying out for the part to check in with the 
casting office at Universal the following 
Thursday afternoon, when they would run 
tests. 

"I thought this was absolutely mad. You 
know; three crazy people, after all, in a rocket 


ship, dashing off to Mongo and running into 
all sorts of things. I just didn't think it had a 
chance. 

"Just before this. I'd been borrowed by 
Universal to make two westerns, and I got to 
know one of the youngsters in the casting 
office. I called him up and said that, while I 
didn't want to test for the thing, I was curious 
to see who was crazy enough to try out for it. 
So he got me on Stage 6 at Universal, where 
sixteen or seventeen fellers were waiting. 

I recognised two of them right away; the 
others I disregarded. They weren't anyone's 
idea of Flash Gordon. One of the two was 
named George Bergman. A handsome, good- 
looking kid. All they had to do with him was 
bleach his hair and he was Flash Gordon. The 
other one, by some stretch of the 
imagination, might make a Flash. It was 
fortunate for him that he didn't get the part 
because a few months later John Ford picked 
him to play the juvenile lead in The Hurricane 
and that made him a star. Jon Hall. 


"Fellow by the name of Henry McRae, who 
had made all the Universal serials back in the 
silent days, was supervising the tests. He 
knew me from the westerns I'd made there 
and he came over. We chatted a while, but I 
didn't mention that I thought the serial didn't 
have a chance. Then he floored me by saying 
'How would you like the part?' I said 'I don't 
know. I like the comic strip but. . .' He said 
'Well, you can have the part if you want it'. 
One-two-three; just like that. Never tried out 
for it. Never donned the outfit with the boots 
and the flash of lightning and whatever". 

Once he took the job Universal set about 
not only getting him into costume but 
changing his appearance as well. "The thing I 
really hated was having to go to Perc 
Westmore's place to get my hair bleached. In 
those days everyone wore hats, and if I was in 
an elevator and a girl got in we'd always take 
off our hats. After my hair was bleached I 
never did it any more; it stayed jammed right 
down. I used to get whistles from guys when 



they saw that bleached hair. If I'd have caught 
some of those guys I'd have killed them". 

Production on Flash Gordon started in 
October 1936. "People have asked me 'I 
guess it was a lot of fun, wasn't it?' It was no 
fun at alll We ran from morning to night. It 
was six weeks in production. Make-up at 
seven every morning. We were on the set by 
eight. Work until noon time, knock off for an 
hour. Back after lunch again. Work until six. 
Knock off for half an hour or forty-five 
minutes for dinner, and back on the set again. 
The Screen Actors Guild wasn't as strong as it 
is now. You were supposed to get twelve 
hours between calls, but we never did. Never 
got through work until ten or ten-thirty every 
night. Six days a week, and when we were out 
on location seven days. 

"To bring it in on time we had to average 
eighty-five set-ups a day with heavy 
equipment — the arc lights and the big floods, 
and hauling that tremendous big camera 
around. I really don't know how we did it, but 


we did. We wrapped it up just before 
Christmas 1 936 and they released the thing in 
February 1937. It cost, in round figures, 
$400,000. The most expensive serial ever 
made. A big picture would cost double that, 
but serials they were bringing in for $75,000 
or less. I thought they were absolutely mad to 
spend that sort of money, but fortunately I 
was wrong". 

That year's big grosser for Universal was 
the Deanna Durbin musical Three Smart 
Girts, but Flash Gordon was number two, 
mainly because the thirteen-episode chapter 
continued to generate income over the length 
of its run. Universal wasted no time over 
cashing in on this unexpected bonanza. 

"We did a second story. Flash Gordon's 
Trip to Mars, in 1938, and, as you know, we 
did Buck Rogers in 1939. In isi40 the studio 
got us together again and they wanted to do 
one more. They were trying to decide 
whether they'd do a second Buck Rogers or a 
third Flash Gordon, and they decided on 


another Flash Gordon because they had more 
stock stuff; two serials to steal stuff out of. I 
never forgave them for that. We roughed out 
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe in five 
weeks. It was the weakest, far and away, of 
the three. I wasn't very proud of that one". 

Universal did not stop at cribbing from 
previous serials. Sections of foreign films like 
Dimitri Buchowetzki's The Midnight Sun 
were lifted intact for all three Flash serials, 
and details copied from Metropolis, among 
other classics. The gates of Paris from 
William Dieterle's Hunchback of Notre Dame 
became the entrance to Ming's palace and the 
tunnels in all the serials had originally been 
built for Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera. 

Crabbe takes little credit for the success of 
the series. "I never set out to be an actor. I was 
never interested in 'treading the boards'. It 
never entered my mind to take a dramatic 
course from some good coach. If you looked 
good in those days, that was enough. 

"There were three main factors involved in 





Right: Tht emt of Flash Gordon (1936) 
won nunitod in tho 1938 toria) Flash 
Gordon's Trip to Mars, with Jton Bogort 
and Buttar Crabba. Top right: A blonde 
Dale Arden pleadt for Flath Cordon's 
niaeae in the original Flash Gordon. Centre 
right: 77»# nittue potter for the feature 
film, compiled from the 1936 serial. Bottom 
rii^it: Butter Crabbe In Flash Gordon. Far 
right: The nittue potter from the film 
version of Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mart. 


28 


the serials' success. The actor they chose to 
play Ming, Charlie Middleton, was excellent. 
And Alex Raymond's original concept was 
wonderful. I got to know him when I went east 
to do personal appearances to promote the 
first serial. Originally he was an artist like 
Norman Rockwell. He liked to paint 
good-looking men and good-looking women 
in vivid colours. But he had a wife and five 
children to suppK>rt and he told me 'I knew I 
had to do something to make money'. He 
decided if he could get away from the Earth 
and Earth-people he could do anything with 
characters and costumes he liked. "When 
King Features accepted the idea he went out 
and bought himself a sports car, a Jaguar. 
He'd always wanted one." (Ini 956, Raymond 
was killed near his home in Greenwich, 
Connecticut, when he ran into a tree in that 
same car.) 

"But the first factor was the Universal 
special effects departments. They had 
nothing to go on, with the exception of what 


Raymond had drawn in the comic strip. They 
had to make everything up as they went 
along. The Light Bridge — they did that by 
scraping emulsion off the film to make a 
white line, then reducing the scraped areas 
bit by bit to show it getting longer or shorter. 
Pretty basic by today's standards. 

"One day I read in the next day's script a 
scene where Ming has Flash tied up and, to 
demonstrate this ray gun of his, points it at a 
statuette on the table 'and the statuette melts 
to dust'. I thought ' This I have to see' so I went 
along to the special effects man and said 
'How are you going to do this?' And he found 
a clever way to do it. He made a mould of the 
statue and filled it with a fine metal dust, 
which he magnetised through a magnet on 
the table. When he took the mould away the 
dust stayed in place as long as the magnet 
was on, but when he switched it off the whole 
thing just collapsed." 

To Crabbe, his movie carreer was a mixed 
blessing. "I never felt I was part of the movie 


busmess. I was always on the outside, 
looking over the fence, you know? There was 
a definite caste system in the old days; the 
stars only recognised other stars, or top 
producers or directors. A fellow who made 
serials for the kids or quickie Billy the Kid 
westerns . . . forget it! Nor was I ever one to 
think the spring was not going to run dry. I 
never trusted the picture business. I always 
had something going on the side. 

"But I would have liked to find just one 
producer who had the guts to put me in with 
good company. They thought about it; for a 
time they billed me as Larry Crabbe," (his real 
Christian name is Clarence) "because I guess 
'Buster Crabbe and Marlene Dietrich' would 
have looked sort of funny. But I never got the 
chance. And one day I thought, just after I'd 
done the first Flash Gordon, 'If this is what 
they think I do best, the hell with it. This is 
what I'll do'. And that's what I did." It was a 
decision for which millions of filmgoers have 
every reason to be grateful. ^ 





F rank ULosgia )$ 2S. and Nar No Evil 
t$ his first feature fitm From the toofts Of it 
ULoggie's fifth feature fitm inight be something 
impree^e. Fear No Evil is pompous, siffy and 
contusing, but it also has several interesting 
seguences end a great deal of conviction The dimaa 
is a dizzying mixture of effects and action, slmost 
impossible to follow or make sense of. but it is 
colourful and well-staged 

In a prcfiogue, an old priest (Jack HoHtmf) chases 
down and does battle with none other than Lucifer 
bimseif fftchardJsKSAwrthoflj/, apparentiv 
vanguishing the demon. Thisbattiatrtes place in and 
around a peculiar castla-like structure on an island in 
upper New Vork, anti it's also the sett^ for die 
battle between good and evil at the climex 
Lucifer has the last laugh on the oM pnast. He has 
been reincarnated in Andrew, an intense, nervous 
boy who grows up in t household where hi$ father 
{Batry Cooper! and mother (Alice Sachs) constantly 
battle over him. His fadter fears he knows just what 
Andraw is, but hts mothar loves the weird boy. 

As the story proper begins, Andrew (Stefan 
Amgrim) is a high school student undear about his 
future and his powers. He's frightened of his atnlities 
and is iust beginning to know how to use them By 
the end of the film he has given himsatf over 
completely 

In an early ibut not early enough) scene, Andrew 
shows up late for a physical education dess, snd the 
teacher /PbMp E. Ray) punishes him by forcing him to 
do solitary pushups As Amgnm's head bops in snd 
out Df the frame, it's obvious that LaLoggis is setting 
up something, so when Arngrim comes up with 
glowing eyes amf a grin of demonic glee it's hardly 
surprising. He uses bis powers tomdia tha teacher 
kilt another student with a besketbdl, probably a 
movie first. 

While Andrew is consobdeting bis abfiiiies, 
eiseMdiere Julie IKaihlean Rowe HAcAHen). a 
dassmste of his, has laamed from Mrs Buchanan 
(Elaabafh Hoffman) that they are the earthly 
mcamatiotts of Gabrielle and Mikhail, two of three 
angels sent by God to destroy Ludler. Thi priist at 
the beginning was the third angel, and he's been 
tossed in j»l lor murder Julie is surprised by this 
mfortnation. Who can blame her? 

EventuaBy Andrew goes back to dial island castle, 
becomes e demon tdtysicelly, raises an army of the 
fiving dead (some of whom dig their way out of their 
graves with shovelsL and runs around me filmy gown 
which mattes him look fike a setanic trensveslita. His 
sexual orientation probably is conhised'. to get 
revenge on a ihuggish classmate (Darnel Eiknl 
Andrew gives him woman's breasts. 

Since the Bving dead are confined to the idand. 
where they wipe out a party of high sehoot kids, their 
usefulness seams timitad. But Andrew's sliB having 
tun. On a beach nearby, an annuel Passion ffiay is 
tdting tdace Andrew causes people's hair to start 
bleeding and ligbtning bolit to cre^ to the Earth. I 
honestly wouldn't have bean surprised if tha people 
who fled into the ocean for protection had been 
attadted by sharks; avetytl^ else from recent 
movies seemed to be beetling the innocent The 
hapless actor ptaying Jesus ends up both crucified for 
red and hied. 

Meanwhile, Mrs Buchanan and Juba, armed with 
an omata cross, row madly over to the isiand and 
battia tha dirieking. mincing Andrew in a climax laden 
with cofourful but inapproptiate speciat effacts. 

Trank LaLoggia seems to have sedved the problems 
of his fitm visudty rather than dramaticaliy - H was 
conceived as a styhsh. colourfut horror epic with 
scads of dazzling effects. Unfortunately, LaLoggia 
wes also reguired to write a story tying all this 
together tt'sa shame ha decided to use the Son-oT 
the-Devil storyfina, as it has been done to death widi 
Bosamary'e Bdiy and many other films. Sul LaLoggia 
feels that because ha deriviK) fw story elements from 
tha Book of Savetaiions. he's being noveL 
Wefl. novelty is good but it isn't everything, ft'^s 
novel to have a devil who dresses in a black 
nightgown, screams constantly, and looks like he'son 
his way to a midnight screening of The Rocky Nerrer 
Pfctvre Show. Novel yes, but it's also siBv, a batHy 


Cam llfi ffif ii 


Top: Lucifer’s army of the Liemg Daatt menaces the hofitlaymaken on a remote itlant/ Ht upstata 
New York. Above: BieharP Jay Srverthom ptayt Laefathifr, an early incarrmtion of tha tSemon 
Lucifer, 


judged eftect. 

Peter Kuran's company did the elaborate but 
cartoony effects et the etknax thei look more 
mipfopriate fora Disney comedy dianfor die ultimate 
confrontation between Good and Evil. 

■Rw photography by Fred Goodicfi « imaginatively 
conceived, but ft usurify fads to addeve the effects 
ha wBsobwously striving lot. He often wants huge 
shadows from b^-lit actors to dice through the 
foggy sets, but he ovadights them and the shadows 
dia a few teat in front of die actors' waving arms. 
Elsewhera. the photography seems overly 
decorative, but alt m ab it's not a bad try tor a low- 
budget IBm. 

director LaLoggia trias several interesting ideas. In 
an early scene, we see the shadow of Andrew on a 
wall as he studies a book; the hook is in bont of the 
camera but Amtrew » mvisifale. From Ahtfraw's Ur^ 
until the story proper begins, wa tee tha passage of 
time in the aging ^ degeneration of hie parent's 
house in a series of Isp dissolvas And though it 
doesn't mAe much sensa. a lot of die apocalyptic 
ckmax is handsome and exciting. 

Fear No Evil is baifly paced 1 ^ die Swift efimax, 
and many scenes, particuierV those between 
Elizabeth Hoffman and KatfdMn Rowe McAHen, drag 
on endiesaty LaLoggia apparandy felt that the 
religious fo^rot diey chat about was essential to the 
story, but he's very wrong. Mudi of die acting is 
smaieutish induding, unfortunately, that of Sttfsn 
Arngrim in the central rota. He's way too intense and 
moody, and often seems funny rather than fiendish. 

But Fear No Evit is stiB worth seaing. LaLoggia 
tries for big issues and (fifferent effacts. He's a 
director with imeginatbn and perhaps some st^e. He 


doesn't yet show tha control or discipline necassery 
iomakaa successful film, but those are IBiefy to conla 
in time. He could bee teiem to watch A 


Feaf NoEviMlSSI) 


Stefan Amgnro MnOroiW. Fkitaatn Hoiantn 
(MMiiihMereeftt Buchanan). KamteenHovw 
McASen leabneitHJijiei. frank Bimey ff ether 
Myl Darnel Eden (Tonyt, Jack Hoilsnd fRefeet 
ifatfier Pemtxi^ Bany Cooper MA HratuvRst Akce 
Sadis (Mrs WiRamsi, Paul Hebar IMaiSL Aoelrn 
Gugmo IMenel. Ricliani J Silvarthom HacRtrt, 

Ann Simpsdn^femfaL JOyeaBumpus 
iSttsen), Patricia OetMs iBene), Chris OeimteMis 
YRrcharid. Malcolm Hagge flobari rCufKi 

fStevef, Don D'Ned /Mr AaminL Daanie Gordon 
(giMlenceceenceihh.BMhtit. ftoy tgynieecReri. 
Aiaxandra Clevaianil /srufent wacfiect JfitRichtar 
ffheOuistl Pan Mama /VirpwiMend TobyGoH 
frepenerl Dick Suit enayar/ frank SSoMaaanm (Tti* 
Hamut). MeMsa Rogm ihare). Baby fisliei tBebf 
Amtrawl, Joe LitO{^ Nntnk) 

Written and dicectea by freak Lal e gei i . Art ditsetor 
Carf Zone, Music by frank UUwla and DavW 
Speer, Edited by Radi Paul, Efiractat af Pbdto- 

graphy Tied fia i dick . Sound affaeti Uipatviaor 
Pesm Karon. Ptrotographic enacts by ^ Saay and 
J awma Savaa, Effects animation by OMa C a sa dy. 
Pyroladmics/agaciai anmadeH by SaaaaTaroat, 
Atnmaicrs Rtdhy Kaea. Pam VMt and Wckaid 
Sifyanfcawa. Optical aHects supervisor K abar t 
Braywi, Aseecipre ptoducacsOaaaidP. Sertkata end 
Carl R. R ay a eie s . Produced iryfraak la U ggla and v 
CkatlaaM. laUggia. Exacutive producer C k aria e M. 
UUggfa 




Top: Father Damon (Jack Holland), the Earthly incarnation of 
the angel Raphael, battles against Lucifer himself. Above; 
Margaret Buchanan (Elizabeth Hoffman), the irKarnation of the 
Shge! Mikhail, prays for guidance. Ri^t: Armed with an ornate 
crucifix, Julie/Gabrialle (Kathleen Rowe McAllen) con fron a 
Lucifer at the climax of Fear No Evil. 





32 



A ll the best ideas seem obvious as 
soon as someone else has thought 
^them up. This is the case with 
Raiders of the Lost Ark — it now seems 
obvious that a great idea for a movie 
would be to take a story that is a pure 
distillation of practically every pulp 
adventure magazine published during the 
1930s and give it the big-budget/big 
screen treatment after the manner of Star 
Wars — but if anyone else apart from 
George Lucas had tried to get this project 
off the ground I doubt if any of the 
Hollywood companies would have shown 
a flicker of interest in it. I also doubt that 
if anyone other than Lucas and Steven 
Spielberg had made this picture it would 
be anything near the success it is. 

I have the grim suspicion that film 
producers in Hollywood and places else- 
where are looking at Raiders and saying 
to themselves: "Hmmm, that looks easy. 
We just get an adventure story with lots 
of action, a few jokes, set it in the 1930s, 
mix in some occult mumbo jumbo and 
away we go. Of course we can only afford 
a budget of 200,000 US dollars and 
instead of Spielberg we'll get my brother- 
in-law Sid to direct it but otherwise the 
suckers in the cinemas will never know 
the difference." Well, when the flood of 
cheap Raiders imitations starts to arrive 
we suckers are going to know the 


difference because there is much more to 
Raiders than meets the eye. 

Lucas's and Spielberg's biggest 
achievement with Raiders (and one 
should also credit Lawrence Kasdan, who 
wrote the screenplay, and Philip 
Kaufman, who co-wrote the original story 
with Lucas) is that they have mixed all 
the above ingredients just right. But most 
importantly they have treated the whole 
thing with just the right amount of 
humour, which is the most difficult task 
of all to accomplish with a picture like 
this. It would have been so easy to get the 
balance wrong and end up with two hours 
of High Camp. 

That's exactly what happened when 
George Pal brought the 1930s pulp hero 
Doc ^vage to the screen in 1975, and the 
same thing applies to the Oe Laurentiis 
version of Flash Gordon. But while there 
are plenty of camp elements in Raiders 
they aren't treated self-consciously. 
Instead they are presented with a straight 
face and the viewer can either enjoy them 
or ignore them, depending on his or her 
age and mental development (and the two 
aren't necessarily connected). In this 
respect Raiders even improves on Super- 
man II, though if it comes to the crunch I 
think I'd have to rate Supey the higher of 
the two (but that's just a personal 
preference, folksi). 


One hopes that someone will tie De 
Laurentiis to a chair and make him watch 
Raiders several times until he gets the 
point about how this sort of movie 
should be approached. But I suspect that 
cultural and generation gaps will prevent 
him, and other film makers of his ilk, 
frorri ever grasping the point. The secret 
is, of course, that Spielberg and Lucas 
have an unashamedly persona! involve- 
ment in the material and their obvious 
enjoyment of putting it on the screen is 
communicated to the audience. They 
may have their tongues in their cheeks 
but they don't treat their material 
cynically, unlike some film makers I 
could mention . . . 

The marvellous self-contained opening 
sequences in Raiders set the tone for the 
rest of the movie — they are a glorious 
mixture of spectacular, fast-paced action 
and sly humour. It all begins like some 
White Hunter film of the 1930s with the 
archeologist hero, Indiana Jones 
(Harrison Ford, who is surprisingly good 
in the role) hadcing his way through the 
jungle with two shifty guides (soon to 
become one) and then enterirtg a gloomy 
cave to obtain a precious carved head 
which is protected by an amazing variety 
of lethal devices. It's the sheer abundance 
of these devices and the way they are 
unleashed upon Jones and friertd — ► 


33 



swiftly building up in visual absurdity 
(though never too absurd) to culminate in 
what appears to be a giant ball bearing 
that chases Jones with the speed of an 
express train as the cave self-destructs 
around him — that makes dear to us 
Raiders isn't simply a 1981 remake of a 
1930s movie but an exhilarating ce/e- 
bration of the entire action/adventure 
genre, incorporating the pulps, old movie 
serials and comic books. 

The light touch is maintained when we 
rejoin Jones back in pre-World War 2 
America. Like Superman he is two 
separate people - when abroad he is the 
tough man-of-action with a leather jacket 
and whip coiled permanently at his hip 
but when at home he is a mild-mannered, 
but handsome, college professor who is 
obviously adored by every female 
member of his class. 

After this brief exposure to the 
intellectual side of his persona the story 
proper begins with Jones being requested 
by the government to track down the lost 
Ark of the Covenant which contains the 
fragments of the two stone tablets on 
which the 10 Commandments were 
inscribed. It seems that the Ark contains 
a great power that could be harnessed for 
destructive purposes and Hitler is anxious 
to get his hands on it (when I first heard 
about Raiders I presumed the Ark 


referred to in the title was Noah's and 
couldn't understand why Hitler wanted 
it . . .). 

The first step in the quest involves 
locating a certain gold medallion that 
contains a vital map. The medallion is in 
the possession of none other than an old 
girlfriend of Jones' called Marion (played 
by Karen Allen, last seen trying to cope 
with Al Pacino's leather fetish in 
Cruising). Marion is a rather tough young 
lady who runs a bar in, of all places, 
Nepal, and judging from the exterior 
shots her establishment must be the last 
opportunity to fill your tank before 
Tibet. As an indication of just how tough 
she is our first sight shows her 
participating in a drinking competition 
with the local drunk, who is built like a 
Yeti, which she wins. She makes Lois 
Lane look like a push-over. 

Even Indiana Jones has some trouble 
persuading her to cooperate but after a 
' violent and spectacular intrusion by a 
bunch of comic book Nazis Marion sees 
the light and accompanies Jones to Cairo 
with the medallion. In Cairo there is more 
violent action, including one of the best 
visual jokes in the picture (which I won't 
spoil by describing to you), but Indiana 
succeeds in locating the Ark and goes 
about excavating it right under the noses 
of an entire German army. Alas, the Nazis 


then get the upper hand when Indiana is 
betrayed by his old archeology rival, 

Belloq (Paul Freeman) and sealed, with 
Marion, in a tomb along with around a 
million poisonous snakes (a fear of snakes 
is Indiana's only weak spot), not to 
mention a crowd of mummified corpses 
in an adjacent tomb. 

After escaping from the tomb there is 
a well-choreographed fight involving 
Indiana, a giant German and a Flying 
Wing aircraft that goes out of control, 
followed by an even more spectacular 
action sequence during which the 
stuntmen perform some truly harrowing 
stunts on a speeding truck (and even 
under a speeding truck). 

There's a brief romantic interlude on a 
ship but as in the Star Wars movies Lucas 
makes sure that the 'mushy stuff' is 
treated with irreverence. After some 
clowning around Indiana actually falls 
asleep when Marion finally gets him into 
bed . . . 

But then the Nazis pop up again, this 
time in a U-boat, and grab both the Ark 
and Marion. However, in James Bond style 
Indiana hitches a ride on the outside of 
the sub all the wa*/ to his secret base 
(presumably holding his breath for long 
periods during the journey. 

After more action the climax occurs 
when the Nazis open the Ark in a desert 


34 





Opposite top left: Mahon (Karen Allan) finds hartaif surrounded by ancient 
rotting corpses. Opposite below loft: Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) calmly 
brushes e horde of tarantula spiders from his bearer's back. Opposite right: 

A member of the specie! effects team demonstrates the abilities of one of 
the mechanical dummies used in the climax of the film. Left: Indiana Jones 
gains access to the German archaologicai dig. disguised as an Arab. Above: 
Indy ducks behind a German plane during his fight with a huge German 
solder. Below: Marion holds her winnings from the drinking competition 
tMikh takes place in her Nepalese saloon. 


canyon and by this time the picture has 
changed its mood, the humour being left 
behirtd. The sequerK»s showing what 
happens after the Ark is opened are a 
bizarre mixture of DeMille’s Ten 
Commandments, Fantasia (the Bald 
Mountain section), the climax of Close 
Encounters and even Scanners. 

It's all very impressive and a 
considerable achievement for effects 
supervisor Richard Ediund but I dread to 
think how some of the more literal- 
minded fans are going to react to it. Very 
soon. I'm afraid, we will see the first 
lengthy treatise attempting to prove a 
connection between the power in the Ark 
and the Force, etc, etc (I must admit my 
big fear was that Yoda would pop out of 
the Ark). 

As with Star Wars there is much fun to 
be had in spotting the filmic references in 
Raiden. Apart from the ones I've already 
mentioned, plus The Mask of Fu Manchu 
which also centered around an 
archeological hunt (for the death mask 
and sword of Genghis Khan) and similarly 
ended with a death ray machine going out 
of control and wiping out Fu's followers, 

I think Raiders owes most to the James 
Bond movies. But then the early Bonds 
themselves exploited the basic format of 
the old movie serials, dressing up the non- 
stop action, hair-breadth escapes, etc. 


with a veneer of sophistication and 
tongue-in-cheek humour that enabled 
"adults" to enjoy the fun without feeling 
guilty about it. 

But though Raiden may be nothing 
more than a Bond movie set in the 1930s 
it has more style, panache and wit than 
any of the recent Bonds, including For 
Your Eyes Only. It also has a sense of 
narrative pace and sheer exuberance that 
has been missing from the Bonds for a 
long time and shows up just how lifeless 
and mechanical the Bond series has 
become. 

As I write this I haven't seen any 
reviews of Raiders so I'm curious to know 
how the more intellectual critics are going 
to react to it. I suspect that while 
admitting its technical artistry some will 
complain that it's depressing to see so 
much skill and money go into the making 
of a film that is essentially mindless, 
labelling it as a further indication of the 
intellectual and artistic bankruptcy 
affecting the new breed of young 
American film makers who can only 
make films by cannibalising the old 
Hollywood carcass instead of producing 
films that are genuinely original etc, etc. 
Well, all this may be true and no doubt I 
will feel guilty as hell when I go and see 
Raiders for the second and probably third 
time ... A 



35 




STARBURST PRESENTS THE SECOND HALF OF 
THE TWO PART INTERVIEW WITH DAVID 
CRONENBERG, BEST KNOWN FOR HIS HORROR 
P\LMS SH/VERS, RABID, THE BROOD AND. 
MORE RECENTLY, SCAA//V£/?S. PHIL EDWARDS 
TALKED TO CRONENBERG, WHEN HE VISITED 
LONDON RECENTLY, ABOUT HIS LIFE, HIS 
WORK AND HIS FUTURE PROJECTS. 




Starburst: All your films have spotlighted a 
kind of corrupt sexuality, but it is something 
that is absent from Scanners . . . 

David Cronenberg: Yes it is, although with 
The Brood the sexual element had more to do 
with procreation. There is still some of that in 
Scanners, the scene with the pregnant 
woman. 

That was the scene that really gave me the 
creeps. . . 

That's what a lot of people have said here. 
And yet in the States that scene is never 
mentioned. For example, that seance scene 
does get giggles from certain audiences but I 
don't mind because it's the kind of magic 
mushroom in the centre and the humour was 
not unintentional. When we were doing it I 
said "You know what we're doing, this is the 
sixties, we're all sitting around going OM 
together", and of course my actors all knew 
what I was talking about. So we were very 
aware of that and that had a certain cast about 
it for a certain age group of the North 
American audience. It's not necessary for that 
to be there for the film to work but I think it's 
there. I have the same problem as Milton did 
in Paradise Lost. Obviously the bad scanners 
are more interesting than the good scanners. 
But I didn't want to stay too much on the 
(good guys) and I couldn't help feeling that 
they were a little soppy. I didn't want to hear 
too much of their philosophy and I couldn't 
make it as interesting, even to myself, as the 
darker side. 

/ don 't think it would have worked. It would 
have come over something like Scientology. 
It's funny that you mention that because in an 
earlier version of the script I had bad scanners 
having a front called “Materiology" whxch 
was a Scientology-like church that they used 
as a front, and of course, being telepathists, 
they could be very effective at doing what 
Scientologists would like to be able to do. 
That idea got lost. 

The end of the script that / read was weak— 
the due! didn't exist at that point. 

Well you may have read the expurgated 
version. Some of the drafts were for showing 
to people who would have been bothered by 
the blood. It wasn't done by me, it was done 
by a secretary or somebody. I haven't even 
seen an entire version of the script. For me it 
doesn't exist, because I was writing it in 
pieces, out of sequence, and I never really 
said "OK. Here is the script, now let's go out 
and shoot it". There are many versions of the 
script. 

When you were six months into editing you 
shot another week of the duel. What did you 
add at that point and why did you add it? 
There were some photos around of a guy with 
some sparks coming out of his head. That 
was from the first version. Our lack of 
preparation really caught up with us there, 
that was the main reason for reshooting. I 


really just had more time to consider what I 
wanted to happen and to go back to that 
"sense of the body". In The Brood it's 
psychosomatic in terms of "my brain, my 
body". In Scanners it's psychosomatic in 
terms of "my brain, your body". And so, 
getting back to that basic concept of how to 
make manifest the power of a scanner, which 
is basically internal, the concept of what the 
duel really should be had more time to 
grow — and I'm sure that it would have been 
very similar if I'd had time to write it into the 
original script. There were a lot of things that 


r 

we tried in the first version of the duel. The 
thing with the sparks was just another way to 
get the character into flames, but it was just 
very ill-conceived and hastily conveived and 
it just didn't work. I don't remember exactly 
what we did shoot. 

At what point did Dick Smith come in? 

He was consulted in pre-production. We all 
went down to his place in upper New York 
State, my art director and special effects 
people and so on, and we went over the script 
and talked about how we would do these 
effects and the possible problems involved. 


36 




He talked to my special effects people about 
materials as well. So he was in on it as a 
consultant right from the beginning. He 
would have come up to work on the set, but 
he was just too exhausted. He'd been working 
on Altered States for eleven months and he 
had had it. 

/ found the Dr Ruth character incredibly 
ambiguous. I was never sure whether he was 
good or bad. Was that intentional? 

Sure. It's perhaps more subtle than what 
happens with the Oliver Reed character in 
The Brood but even he turns out to be much 
less "black". 

They're very similar characters. 

Yes, they are. I think part of the ambiguity is 
that he's not sure. He doesn't think of himself 
as totally bad either and has a certain guilt 
and regret about some of the things he's 
done, as we all do, I suppose. 

/ didn't even think Revok was particularly 
"bad". 

Well, did Idi Amin think himself bad? Seeing 
interviews with him, he was very rational in a 
demented kind of way about how logical it all 
was, and was suggesting that if you were in 
his position you would probably do the same 
thing. I think it's a very unusual and strange 
person who thinks of himself as the 
embodiment of evil and in fact a person who 
does that is probably being deliberately 
melodramatic and probably is not the 
embodiment of evil at all. It then becomes a 
pose. In that sense, I tend to take Or Ruth's 
word for it about what he is and Revok's word 
for it. It always fascinates me when someone 
is so logical, and has arguments that are all 
singly perfectly logical, follow one another, 
lead you over the edge of insanity and you 
hardly even notice, until they say, "My God, 
how did I get here having murdered 12 
people?" You think of famous psychotics you 
have known. They all have incredible 
rationales for why they've done what they 've 
done and it all seemed very straight-forward at 
the time and suddenly here they are in the 
middle of a media storm after just shooting 
someone. It's all a mystery. That's my 
approach to my characters rather than to say 
"I will assign goodness to Cameron Vale and I 
will assign badness to Daryl Revok and I will 
show they are two halves of the same 
personality", (which in a way I'm doing), "and 
I win show good is berter than evil". It's not 
my approach. 

/ interpreted it to mean that science was the 
bad guy. Keller was a bad character. 

Yes, but even then at the moment where he 
kills Dr Ruth there's genuine remorse in his 
eyes, I think. 

Is that what you were aiming for? 

Yeh. 

/ was sorry to see Ruth go. 

Yes. Well, it was time. Certainly I didn't have a 
lot of sympathy for the multinational arms 
corporation but on the other hand that 
doesn't really represent science particularly 
as a certain kind of p>ower politics kind of guy . 

I don't have much sympathy for ConSec. On 
the other hand, ConSec to me does not 
represent science, it represents a particular 
use of science which is not the only use of 
science. The drug company which 
propagated ephemoral is like the drug 
company which allowed thalidomide to go on 
the market without testing it properly. I don't 
have much sympathy for them either. But that 
again is not science perse. 

Was it a deliberate parallel between 
thalidomide and ephemoral? 

No. It was just a structure that occurred to me. 
I'm not saying anything about thalidomide 
particularly. It was just the spark that led me 
to come up with ephemorol. In a way I'm 
talking about the scanners being thalidomide 
children, only their deformity is internal and 

37 


relatively invisible as is opposed to external. 

So there is a reference but I wouldn't say it 
was a parallel. 

What do you feel that you did in Scanners that 
wasn 't done in The Fury. 

Oh God, just about everything. I don't think 
The Fury did very much at all. First of all, there 
weren't any scanners in The Fury because a 
scanner is someone who has a very specific 
form of ESP, which he can put a name to, 
which he is aware of and which has its limits. 

In The Fury, one minute they're doing 
psychokinetic things, lifting inanimate 
objects, etc, which is something that 
scanners can't do. One minute you have a guy 
levitating himself and the next minute he's 
falling to his death from a two storey building. 
To me. The Fury was totally confus^ and 
there was no real conception of what this ESP 
' was. It shifted from scene to scene. One 
minute they're saying if you touch someone 
while you're doing this thing they're going to 
bleed from various pores — even that was 
kind of vague and the next minute they're 
doing it and nobody's bleeding and it's totally 
forgotten. I thought there was no conception 
of what telepathy would really be like 
experientially. No conception of what one 
person could do to another. I think the psychic 
duel at the end of Scanners is not entirely 
unexpected in the structure which has b^n 
set up in the rest of the film, whereas John 
Cassevetes' body exploding was a very 
spectacular effect in one sense, and yet the 
audience that I was with was really upset 
when they saw that ending. They couldn't 
believe that the credits were rolling up after 
that and that that was the end of the film. They 
were right, of course, because nothing had 
been resolved or pulled together. The other 
thing is that there are very few films about 
ESP, despite the fact that sf literature is full of 
books about it and part of the reason is that 
it's very internal, something that a novel 
really lends itself well to exploring and 
something that is not so unvisual that it's 
hard to figure ways to make mental ppwer 
manifest in a film. I was certainly faced with 
some of the same problems that De Palma 
was, but I think it's entirely in keeping with 
Stereo which I made in 1%9 and was about 
experiments in artificially created telepathy. 
Also with my other films, that it should be a 
very physical, bodily manifestation of mental 
states. It's not something that I cribbed from 
The Fury. To me it's an obvious approach to 
ESP. There was a young French critic who I 
think completely believes I ripped off 
Scanners from 'Hte Fury, and he almost had 
me convincedi Then some other critics I 
talked to said they didn't think of The Fury 
once when they saw it because they think it's 
totally different. If you give a three line 
summary there are obvious connections and I 
don't deny those. It's just that it's the same 
with the things in Shivers which remind 
people of Night of the Living Dead. We're 
mining the same vein rather than ripping 
each other off. 

What we have today is a group of young film 
makers who have grown up on movies. AH 
their references are filmic. 

Yes, except that, you see, I haven't been 
brought up with films in the same way that a 
lot of young American directors have. I went 
to the movies just as a matter of cou rse. It was 
never a self-conscious thing. I also read a lot. I 
was not brought up to worship the dolly shots 
of Howard Hawks and Wells or anyone else 
and I was not brought up to worship the 
might of Alfred Hitchcock. I saw all of 
Hitchcock's films as they came out. I also saw 
the Durango /C/d and Hopalong Cassidy and 
Shane and The Three Stooges comedies and 
pirate movies, which I love. The other thing 
that you're saying is true. There's mere film 



38 



literacy in general than there ever was before. 
There's also a certain self-consciousness 
about it. But I really try very hard when I'm 
writing my scripts— I'm not thinking about 
films at all. I'm thinking of words and 
literature at that point more than film and I 
really try very hard to keep in touch with my 
own sub-conscious wherever it is at that time. 
If, after it's out there, I see similarities with 
other films, it's a matter of honour for me not 
to change it, even if people say it looks like 
another film. I don't think that's 
dishonourable anyway, but it would be 
dishonourable to my own instincts to change 
something. I find that more often. When it 
gets to the final scene in Shivers I knew 
people were going to think of Night of the 
Living Deed, but that is where the narrative 
led me and it felt very right and proper for the 
film to be there. 

/ think George Romero keeps remaking Night 
of the Living Deed anyway. 

I think that's what happens when you lose 
touch with your own instinct. It's the same 
with Tobe Hooper. He hasn't made another 
film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He's lost 
touch with the source of his own power. 
Funhouse is the best film he's done since 
Texes Chainsaw. 

I'm sure that it is. I was offered the script of 
Funhouse. It didn't interest me. I like working 
from my own scripts. If I do someone else's 
script I'll never see what I would have written 
in the same time period and secondly, 
Funhouse seemed pretty conventional to me. 
That's not to say that it won't be a good 
movie. It's one thing to see a film, it's another 
to spend two years making it. You really have 
to want to do it and so far I haven't found 
anyone else's script that made me want to put 
that much time into it. 

What would you think of making a more 
traditional genre film? 

I really hope that in a sense I'm creating a new 
genre of my own. It's not so much a social 
distaste for being lumped in with other 
people, it's just that I feel there's something 
else going on entirely. To work on a werewolf 
film, for example, means automatically that 
you have to deal with the mythology of that 
sort of sub-genre. It's the same as 
Frankenstein. In a way I would spend more 
time fighting it. You'd have to be conscious of 
other films in a way that I don't like to be. I 
think it makes you so self-conscious that you 
start to worry more about that rather than 
what you really should be worried about, 
which is the Black Lagoon of the unconscious. 
You know The Creature from the Black 
Lagoon?— the Black Lagoon is the 
unconscious and the Creature is all those 
things that I want to get in touch with. I think it 
would make me too worried about 
predecessors and not leave me with enough 
energy to deal with the actual issues which 
are unconscious issues. Not that I wouldn't 
mind seeing a werewolf movie again, or even 
a mummy movie. I used to love mummy 
movies. 

Finally, you said you think you're hopefully 
creating a new genre. How would you 
describe it? 

I think that's better left to you. I don't have 
enough objectivity to analyse it at this point. 
Maybe after another five films it will become 
clearer. 

With special thanks to David Cronenberg and 
to Mike Wheeler of Movieworld Promotions 
and Jack Gray of New Realm Distributors. 


Opposite top; A sctnif cut from thtf finished version of Scanners. During the psychic due! er the climsx of the movie, Revok causes a shower of sparks 
to shoot from the top of Vale's (Stephen Lack) head. Opposite centre: In the opening moments of Shivers, a doctor murders a young girl, cuts her 
stomach open, pours in a bottle of nitric acid, then cuts his own throat. Opposite below: One of the victims in Rabid claims a new convert. Top: 
Samantha Bggar reveals the awful truth in The Brood. Her psychic offspring are actually grown externally, rather than gestated like normal children. 
Above left: Vale, the hero of Scanners, examines the dead body of murdered sculptor. Above: Marilyn Chambers plays the lead character in 

David Cronenberg's Rabid. 


39 


I n StartMirst 34, reader Alan Fletcher's 
question about ITC's package of tv movies 
in America was basically answered in my 
Video Scene article where I pointed out that 
Precision Video has the two episodes he 
mentions namely. Alien Attack and 
Destination Moon Base Alpha, which we have 
already seen on tv over here. Now that 
Precision have made their tapes available for 
rental it will be reasonably inexpensive for 
those of you who missed these to see them, 
without the commercial breaks, of course. 

Two of the big space movies have now 
become available on video since I last wrote, 
that is Alien (from Magnetic 
Video — sale only) and Star Trek from CIC 
Video (sale or rental). There is very little 
point in me writing any more about 
either of those films, except to say Alien 
on the small tv screen, without stereo 
sound, is a different thing from seeing it 
on the Dominion in Tottenham Court 
Road, London. 

A recent addition to the genre is also in 
the Alien mould of destructive creatures 
from an alien planet. The Warning 
comes from Guild Home Video and 
features a collection of cinema old- 
timers fighting off what seems to be 
tomato pancakes which a rather 
unpleasant tall alien tosses about. As 
usual we are in one of those small out-of- 
the-way areas of America where low- 
Dudget movies always talte place and 

Jack Palanca ia our hero. He's an old time 
hunter who decides to turn the tables on 
the alien by hunting him, he's much 
hindered by Martin Lendau as a crazy 
Vietnam war veteran who thinks that 
everything and everyone is a 
Communist plot to take over the world. It 
seems that the alien is just out for a bit of 
fun, seeing how many humans he can 
kill to while away the hours but our Jack 
is more than a match for him. He has a 
wonderfully simple way of getting rid of 
the deadly pancakes, he just gets out his 
scout's pen-knife and peels them off. As 
you can perhaps tell I was not really 
impressed by the film, which has more 
risible moments than necessary. 

After those tomato pancakes one can 
turn to tomatoes proper. Attack of the 
Killer Tomatoes, as doubtless many of 
you will know, was a nominee in Harry 
and Michael Medved's book The Golden 
Turkey Awards, in the category The 
Worst Vegetable Movie Of All Time; it is 
probably not revealing any secrets to say 
that it was beaten out of that title by 
Attack of the Mushroom People. 

Tomatoes was made as I said, as a spoof 
film by a group of young San Diego 
filmakers, Steve Peace and John De 
Bello producing, the latter directing and 
the couple of them joined by Costa 
Dillion for the script. Once again we have 
a small town bearing the brunt of an 
attack by large tomatoes which consume 
everything they manage to roll onto. If 
you want to sample this, it is available 
from VPD (sale or rental). 

Now a few words about some real nasties 
that have found their way onto video recently, 
for following the fashion in the cinema it is the 
horror/thrillers which are proving to be doing 
well. Thus we have John Carpenter's 
Halloween available from VPD on the one 


W 

pctcrcaran- 



Two $c»nM from Ray Ward Bakar'g Asylum, 
now aaailabla from Guild Vidao. Top; Barbara 
Parkins. Above: The avar-prasent Patar Cushing. 


hand and Michael Armstrong's 1970 co- 
production with Germany, Mark of the Devil 
on the other. Herbert Lorn, Udo Keir, starred 
in this Intervision release which is, as it title 
indicates all about our good old friend, the 
witchfinder. All ends pretty nastily with the 
baddie getting away and the goody receiving 
the unwelcome attentions of the villagers 
who are on hand at the appropriate time to 
lynch the nearest innocent bystander. 

Better and more recent films now coming 
onto video include, George Romero's 


Zombies — Dawn of the Dead, not to be 
confused with Zombies — Flesh Eaters, also 
on video from VIPCO. Then there are two 
excellent thrillers from Canadian David 
Cronenberg, Rabid the one with porn star 
Marilyn Chambers in the lead and Shivers. All 
three titles will be available from AlphaVideo, 
a newcomer to the video scene, but actually 
the video side of Alpha Films. 

Incidentally Cronenberg's latest Scanners, 
is now available from Guild Home Video. 

Next let me mention a couple of videos 
recently available, first is an oldie, Roy Ward 
Baker's Asylum, made in 1972 (and also 
known in America as House of Crazies) which 
comes from Guild Home Video and A toy and 
His Dog, an American fantasy film that has 
never been seen in this country which has a 
cult following in America as it is based on a 
story by Harlan Ellison. A Boy and His Dog 
was covered in full in Starfourst 28. 

Asylum is one of those portmanteau films 
with four (or strictly speaking three and a half) 
tales in one: Dr Martin (Robert Powell) comes 
to take up a post at an asylum, only to find that 
the head of the place has apparently gone 
mad himself. His associate (Patrick Magee) 
tells Martin that he'll get the job if he can 
identify which of the four inmates is the mad 
doctor, this allows us to get the four mini- 
stories; Barbara Parkins in the first who is the 
mistress of Richard Todd has trouble with the 
chopped up limbs of the latter's wife; Barry 
Morse as a impecunious Jewish tailor gets 

more than he bargained for when Peter 

Cushing asks him to make a rather specie! suit 

for his son; Charlotte Rampling suffers from 
schizophrenia and believes that her other 
half, played by Britt Ekiand, has killed her 
brother and nurse and finally Herbert Lorn is 
trying to literally breathe life into some 
puppets he has made in his own likeness. The 
trouble with these short stories is that there is 
no time to create any depth of 
characterisation and we are left with 
whatever twist the script can conjure up for 
us. 

A final footnote: animation has of course 
been an ideal medium for conveying the 
fantastic, although it has generally been less 
concerned with ideas than fantastic 
situations that could not be depicted by 
conventional means in the cinema. 

Gottfried Burger's romantic classic story 
about the fabulous Baron Munchausen has 
inspired the cinema a number of times: 
Melies in 191 1, Emile Cohl a couple of years 
later, the famous version by J. von Baky in 
1943 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 
UFA studios with Hans Albers in the title role 
and then a marvellous version by 
the Czech director Karel Zeman in 1962, 
which combined live action and special 
effects. Now on video we have a 
complete animation version by the 
Frenchman Jean Image, which is 
suitable for all the family; Munchausen . 
is basically a series of tall stories, 
whereby the Baron and his dog sat off for 
the land of T rukesban and along the way 
pick up a number of curious characters 
all blessed with one special attribute, 
Hercules with strenght, Nimrod with far- 
reaching sight. Hurricane with the ability to 
blow things down, etc. The most amusing 
sequence in a rather stiffly told story is where 
the birds turn the tables on the humans and 
put them in cages whilst they are on trial. 9 


40 


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' A Special Report by Phil Edwards 



H arley Cokliss, once set as director of 
Thongor in the Valley of Demons, 
has finally found backing for his own 
first full-length feature film, Battletruck. Set 
to commence shooting in the south island of 
New Zealand on July 27th, the film is an 
action adventure story set in the not-too- 
distant future. 

The origin of Battletruck dates back to 1 975 
when Cokliss was in Los Angeles shooting 
interview programmes for the BBC series. 
Arena. One of the programme's subjects was 
Roger Corman. After the filming was 
completed, Cokliss briefly told the famed 
producer/director the basic outline of 
Battletruck. Corman was enthused and 
offered Colkiss a tentative deal. 

The American-born director wrote a first 
draft of the script and various production 
negotiations were set in motion. Nearly six 
years and several more scripts were to pass 
before Cokliss was able to bring the 
production to fruition. Several writers were 
brought in to work on the screenplay and 
when the film finally hits the screens 
sometime next year the credits will read: 
Screenplay by Peter McDougall, based on an 
original story by Cokliss and John Beech. 

Battletruck is an American-New Zealand 
co-production. The New Zealanders are 
producers Lloyd Phillips and Rob 
Whitehouse. Phillips picked up the Oscar this 
year for the Best Short Film, The Dollar 
Bottom and Whitehouse has just completed 
work on a horror film in NZ called Scarecrow, 
starring John Carradine. 



Top: Director Harley Cokliss, who is currently 
working on his first full-length feature film, 
Battletruck. Above: John Bolton is responsible 
for the full<olour promotional artwork for 
Battletruck (see opposite page). 


Cokliss is understandably cautious about 
revealing the nature of the film, although he is 
adamant that the feature will not be another 
Damnation Alley. He did reveal however that 
it will contain some truly spectacular action 
and stuntwork, some of which has never been 
attempted on the screen before. 

Equally cautious about the look of the film, 
Cokliss brought in the talented John Bolton, 
with whom he had worked briefly on 
preproduction of Thongor. Bolton painted the 
promotional poster for Battletruck as well as 
doing storyboards. Cokliss, a great admirer of 
Bolton's work, also hopes that the artist 
will be responsible for a comic book 
adaptation, should one appear and that 
Bolton might have some input when the film 
poster advertising campaign is designed. 

Casting for Battletruck has not yet been 
finalised, although Cokliss hopes to have the 
main leads of the film played by Americans 
and under the terms of the co-production deal 
the remainder of the cast would be New 
Zealanders. 

Shooting takes place in some of the most 
rugged country in New Zealand which Cokliss 
describes as among the most beautiful and 
unspoiled he has seen anywhere. 

Cokliss retains creative cdntrol over the 
film, though as usual, Corman, as distributor 
in North America has final say on the cutting 
of the film for that territory. However, Cokliss 
foresees no "cutting room battles" with 
Corman. 

Battletruck is set for a Spring 1982 release. 


42 





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NEXT: THE STARS OUR DESTINATION! 


STORY AND ART BY PAUL NEARY 


45 





Top: Snake Plitsken (Kurt Ruuell) rum from 
the World Trade Centre during hit mission ro 
bring The President out of Manhattan State 
Penitentiary. Escapt from Naw York. Above: 
Director John Carpenter. Left: A portrait of 
Kurt Russell as Snaka PUssken. 


smji6r irnERvj€w wim 


Last issue John Carpenter talked about Escape from New York, 
Someone s Watching Me, Eyes of Laura Mars and his life in general. 
This month, in the second and final part of the interview, he speaks 
to Tony Crawley about his future projects including The Thing 
and Halloween II. 




F or a film-maker so steeped in old 

movies, the fact that John Carpenter is 
due to re-make one of his eternal 
favourites still rather shocks me. No surprise 
about the golden oldie he's chosen — it's The 
Thing (1951), the one watched by the babysat 
kids in Halloween, oblivious of the mounting 
terror around them. 

But re-makes are anathema to me. And 
Carpenter reads this, or some of it, in my 
question about The Thing project. "You're 
surprised I'd even try to make that again?" he 
asks. 

Yes, I am, I tell him. Considering his great 
love of Howard Hawks, chief among his 


notable influences as a director after 
Hitchcock, Welles, Bunuel and a touch or two 
(fortunately, not the sentimental touches) of 
Ford, I would have presumed that Carpenter 
would rather buy the rights ofthe 1951 movie 
and re-release it himself, and make sure it 
was seen as often as possible. 

He nods. "Well, about two years ago now, 
the producers — Universal own The Thing — 
bought the RKO rights to the film, and David 
Foster and Larry Turman asked me if I'd like to 
make it. I re-read the short story by John W. 
Campbell Jnr called W/io goes there? I don't 
know if you're familiar with the story . . .7 
Well, the book is completely different to 


what Howard Hawks did with it. "It's one of 
my favourite films. But not all of it is my 
favourite Hawks. It gets off in some funny 
places — like the girl. There's a whole scene 
when the hero's handcuffed and he talks to 
her, and it's real cutesy stuff. But I can see 
why the film is completely different to the 
book. It's a very complex but fascinating 
monster story and a tremendous challenge to 
try and do the book. 

"The Thing is not a humanoid in the story. 
It's described as having nine eyes and worms 
coming out of it It's a giant glob-monster- 
type-thing. But the essential difference is 
what the creature does ... it assumes the 
physical identity of its victims. And I've never 
seen that done in a movie before. A 
fascinating idea." 

And, as it happens, this concept is not 
entirely new to Carpenter. After Dark Star, he 
and Dan O'Bannon were preparing a film 
called They Bite. Their creature was a 
prehistoric insect which also aped its victims 
biologically . . . 

So you re-read the book and said Yes— yes? 
"I agreed to do The Thing, if I didn't have to 
write it. I didn't feel I could do that, just as I'd 
never try the male camaraderie thing the way 
Hawks did it . . . you know what I'm saying? 
So, we hired William Lancaster. He's Burt 
Lancaster's son and a tremendous writer. He 
wrote The Bed News Bears (1976)." 

That hardly sounds a worthwhile reference 

"Well, I've read half of the script at this 
time, he's not finished yet, and it is . . . 
incredible\ I'd like to shoot it with a big star, 
shoot it in the Arctic and really go for it . . . But 
I'm not really answering your question: Why 
re-do The Thing? Well, it just seems like the 
right thing to do. There's certain elements in 
the set-up of people stuck in the Arctic that 
appeals to me." 

Isolatiort is your trademark? 

"I tike people in isolation . . .1 Anyway, I 
think The Thing is the king of the monster 
movies and it'd be fun to try it." But we hadn't 
exhausted the subject of Carpenter's remake 
of The Thing. 

Starburst: As such a Hawks fart, wouldn'tyou 
prefer your version to be named after the 
book? 

Carpenter: Oh nol The Thirtg is the greatest 
title of them all. 

But you're also working on others . . .B 
Diablo comes first. What will a Carpenter 
Western be like? Hawksian again, no doubt. 
You edited Assault on Precinct 13— an urban 
ghetto Rio Bravo, anyway— as John T. 
Chance, which was John Wayne’s name in the 
Hawks film. You said once on BBC-tv that 
you'd like the film-making dock to have 
stopped round the SOs, the era of Rad River, 
Rio Brave— or not later than Hawks sequels 
with Wayne, B Dorado and Rio Lobo. And isn't 
B Diablo an anagram of both film titles . . . 
[He smiles] 

It's more like The Seerchers, in fact. A 
revenge story. With some gothic elements, in 
it. A traditional Western because I don't think 
Westerns need to be anything else than . . . 
Westerns. 

Well, you should have, you made an sf 
Western at f4— Terror from Spece, full of 
cowboys, Indians and aliens . . . 

I love WestemsI Always have, since very 
young. It's the good guys vs the bad guys. It's 
always life or death on the line. I guess K goes 
back to Homer and the Iliad— all Westerns 
kinds spring out of that. It's an American 
tradition, the only one we have. But the genre 
has been beaten to death with everybody 
fiddling around trying to do something 
different. I call them 'the Beverley Hills 
westerns'. That's what nearly killed it for 
me— Butch Cassidy end the Sundance Kid ^ 



47 



Abo/e: A scene from one of Adrienne Berbeeu't fevourite movies, Henri-Georges Oouit's Th« 
Fiandi (Lm Diaboliquas). Below: A still from the film that almost single-hendedly began the whole 
"stalk-andslash" school of movie-making - Hallowaan. 


(1969), aw, c.mon! 

What was the last traditional Western you 
saw? 

Well, if you consider The Wild Bunch (1969) 
revisionist. I'd say Rio Lobo (1971) was 
probably the last traditional Western. 

The last Howard Hawks film, too. 

Exactly. One of the classics of all time would 
be Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in the 
West ( 1969). [And he does, incidentally, give 
out titles and dates like that parantheses and 
all] That is maybe one of the greatest 
movies of all time. But I wouldn't want to copy 
Leone, I wouldn't dare to try his whole thing 
of the cowboy stepping into close-up, the 
sounds he uses, or the music . . . 

PROMETHEUS 

CRISIS 

Although minus any poster, your name was 
being bandied abround also two years ago 
for another film: The Prometheus Crisis. A 
kind of China Syndrome for real. That's one 
project that's got away. What happened . . . 
apart from China Syndrome, of course? 

It's a long story and a kinda interesting one. 
Before The China Syndrome came out in 
1979, a full year or so before, when no one 
knew anything about nuclear power. I was 
asked [by producers George Braunstein and 
Ron Hamady] to do The Prometheus Crisis— 
a disaster novel written by the same people 
who wrote The Towering Inferno (Thomas N. 
Scortia and Frank M. Robinson). I'd always 
wanted to do a nuclear disaster movie, 
because of a book called Nerves by Lester 
Delray, back in the '40s. I got all excited and 
these producers said, "We'll have $4-million 
for you as a budget." It turned out, they didn't. 

TOTAL RECALL 

Another project now missing from your 
schedule is Dan O'Bannon's Total Recall. I 
thought you two were pals again. 

I really like the script, very exciting, very 
human too, one of Dan's best. Like a James 
Bond in the future. It would cost a lot and the 
only reason I'm not doing it is, welL I've got all 
these other things . . . 

HALLO\NEENII 

What's your connection, if any, with the 
Halloween sequel? 

I'm not going to direct it. The distributors 
have asked me to executive produce it. And 
as part and parcel of that, there's a chance I 
may get my friend Tommy Wallace — my art 
director on The Fog, Halloween and 
Assault— to direct it. If that's possible, then I'll 
exec it — just to get my friend in there. 

No other reason . . . 

Well, the only other reason to do it is just to 
see if there's anyway to make it more 
frightening. You know what I'm saying? It's 
almost like an exercise. Could we go further 
with it? Not just the same thing again. 

OTHER PEOPLE'S 
FILMS 

Do you still try to see every movie you can as 
you did as a kid? 

I see a lot ... In Los Angeles, we have the Z 
channel, which is cable television. It has new 
movies all the time. So, at night, when I come 
home from work. I'll sit and watch something. 
I've seen some amazing things. 

Adrienne Barbeau: [from the sidelines] He's 
watching movies all the time! Or he runs 
movies, himself. Non-stop. 

Aa 


John: [Laugh] She doesn't like old movies. 
Adrienne: I'm learning! 

You have to, / guess. 

Adrienne: Right! We've made some 
adjustments because we're very disimilar in 
our personalities, in our hobbies. If he's 
running something I don't want to see, I just 
go off and do . . . whatever. But I do watch 
sometimes. What did we watch the other 
day? 

John: Dirty Harry (1971) 

Adrienne: Well, that wasn't an old movie, I 
guess. But I watched Diabolique with you. 
The Henri-Georges Cluzot film The Fiends 
1955? 

Adrienne: Yes. 

With the corpse rising up out of the bath! 
Adrienne: Yes, yes! I needed to see that in 
preparation for another project I'm working 
on. Hell Hath No Fury [for the couple's his 'n' 
hers company, more hers than his, it seems. 


as its named Hye Whitebread Productions 
"and that's Armenian like my mother. "] 
You're a tough critic, John. You've often 
knocked your superstar rivals . . . 

What I hate worst is pretension. In any form. 
I'll only knock 'em when they become auteurs 
in big quotes. When no one can tell them their 
work really stinks . . . that it doesn't work. 
There's a tyranny about success. All of a 
sudden, people give you everything. Except 
the truth. They'll never look at a film, or a 
scene, not even at an idea and say straight 
out: "You know, that's really a dumb idea." 
Do ! gather we are talking about 1941 or 
Heaven's Gate? 

If I ever get there, then I'll be in trouble ... I 
always have people around me saying. 
That's really bad!' They will always tell me 
what's wrong. 'That's the stupidest thing I've 
ever heard of in my life.' Oh . . .? Okay, thank 
you very much. I value that . . . honesty. 





Well, those Quatermass movies of yours are 
some of my favourite movies of all time, you 
know. I love them. I love Nigel Kneale. You 
know whom I'm talking about? 

Is Bowling Green in Kentucky? 

Right! 

But we saw all the Quatermasses on television 
first. 

Were they better on tv? 

They scared the bejabbers out of people . . . 
and they didn't have Brian Donlevy shuffling 
around— on wheels. 

Oh, I don't think he was bad. But I saw them 
first as film. I understand Quatermass and 
the Pit (1967) was probably the best— the one 
with the underground spaceship. 

HOLLYWOOD LIFE 

With The Fog you joined forces with one of the 
newer major Hollywood companies. You've 
now made two movies in a row forAvco 
Embassy. How free were you in terms of your 
contract? 

Complete creative control. Which is one of 
the reasons I've stayed with them. They're an 
independent company, not really a major. But 
they've an organisation similar to a major, in 
the sense that they have a real distribution 
arm and so forth. They've been excellent to 
me. 

You're switching soon to EMI and then. 
Universal. But for one film at a time, I notice. 
Still wary of the majors? 

Yes. Only in the sense that I don't think they 
will give me complete control. I want to 
control my own work — that's all. But inflation 
is now so crazy in our country — though not as 
crazy as here in Europe — that if you make a 
big film for a major, they say, 'Fine, you can 
direct. You can even have your first cut, fella. 
Then, we'// cut it!' And they'd never let met 
do the music. 

Avco Embassy let me do all of that. They 
have to approve my stories, of course. I don't 
walk in and say. This is what I'm gonna do- 
it's a story about a closet and we'll be in the 
closet for an hour ... or where the fog is the 
central character, or where Manhattan is one 
gigantic prison.' I give them a fuller account. 
But they don't see my storyboards, or my 
rushes. They can — but they don't have the 
absolute right to see them. 

FUTURE 

You have, what was it, three movies to make 
in the next year or so? Are you managing to 
make them fast enough? / mean, John, can 
you keep up with your own prolificacy? 

I'm gonna start to slow down a little bit, 
because in the last three years I've been 
incredibly prolific. Four movies in two years 
at one point. At the end of The Fog I found 
myself totally exhausted, /knd not having 
enough fun. So I've decided to approach it a 
little differently. Each film is going to take as 
long as it takes and as much as it costs to 
make. I'm not going to do a film on a low 
budget anymore, just to do another low 
budge film, you know what I'm saying? 

! know. 

The Fog took longer than I thought it would, 
because of the complicated special effects. I 
should have done El Diablo before Escape 
From New York. It's just gonna have to be 
after . . . 

/ raised the question because there isn 't one 
other very special, very secret Carpenter 
project in the wings of your A vco deal: Withod 
a Trace? 

[Big smile] 

Do you mean: No comment? 

Well, I can't really discuss that one at the 
moment for various reasons. 

You don't want it to wind up as a tele-movie of 

► 

z9 


So let's hear some of those views. Star 
Wars, say? 

Very good. But not great. Some of it was so 
poor, it just showed how starved people were 
for that kind of fun and adventure. 

True. Close Encounters . . . the er, first 
edition ! 

I didn't care for it. He lost control of it. Any 
great work, even if it's flawed, must have the 
director's authority stamped on it. No, I prefer 
their earlier films; American Graffiti and 
Jaws. 

And . . Alien? 

Well, I know the fella who wrote Alien. Or the 
first draft. 

Of course you do. 

Because I'd worked with Dan O'Bannon on 
Dark Star ... I had mixed feelings about 
Alien. I thought some of it was very powerful. 
It was not frightening at all to me. It was . . . 
repulsive in some ways. 


Thoroughly nasty, in fact. 

Nasty, right. Nastly little thing. But it wasn't 
scarey. It was re-make of a film which I'm very 
fond of, ft — The Terror From Beyond Space, 
with Marshall Thompson in 1958. 

[John Carpenter, as I've hinted at earlier, is 
one of the few directors I've met who can 
recount film titles, years and stars like that— 
rather like Eric the film buff in Fade to Black, 
which just happened to be produced by 
Braunstein and Hamady, the pair who wanted 
Carpenter to make Prometheus Crisis. Are thf 
trying to tell us something . . .?] 

And, well. I'd rather have seen It — The Terror 
From Beyond Space again. But Alien had a 
tremendous production design. But it was . . . 
kinda boring! It fell apart completely at the 
end. But it was a grrrreat monster. And the 
stomach thing and everything . . . great stuff. 
And other British films— totally British, that is 


Above: John Carpenter poses with Adrienne Barbeeu, Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh while on 
location shooting The Fog. Below: A tense moment from John Carpenter's brilliant exploitation 
movie Awault on Precinct 13. 



the week/ But hesn'titgot some science 
fiction er . . . traces. Like US government 
experiments in invisibiOty . . . 

[Bigger smite] Some. 

[Carpenter has since reported scrapping the 
project. 7 coutdn 't come up with a third act ' 
he has said] 

So as t asked before, have you enough time to 
make ait your movies? 

I have ideas that will keep me going for the 
rest of my career, ft all depends, of course, to 
be realistic, if I make films that make money, 
that appeal to the public, that people go to see 
. . . you know what I'm saying? First and 
foremost, my films are for the audience. Not 
for critics, if you'll excuse me . . . And not for 
my friends either, although I'm happy to have 
all their views. 

Goodtifonty a few other whia-kids woutd 
understand that. 

So as long as I can make films that people will 
go and see. I'll be happy. 

So, John, win wei _ 


CORRECTION. 

Among the finished projects tisted in my 
Carpenter Fite, Starburst22, was the 
NBC-tv-movie, Better Late Than Never 
(1979), described as being “written (with 
producer Debra Hitt) and directed by John 
Carpenter, "it didn't pan out that way . . . 
Debra was not connected with the tv venture; 
on/y Carpenter' s script (about senior citizens 
in revott) survived, with added input by co- 
executive producer Greg Strang is, and the 
120-minute result was directed by actor 
Richard Crenna. Badty. The cast remains as 
tisted before, with, interestingty enough, 
Donatd Pteasence as a finat addition. 


Above: /Mac Hayes plays The Duke, the toughest 
inmate of the New Yoiis Pententiery. Above left: 
Snake Ptissken (Kurt Ruttell) is injected with a dose of 
“antibodies" by e doctor of the United States Polka 
Force. Left; The specie! effects crew of Escape From 
New York posM with some of the models for the tong 
distance shots of the Manhattan skyline. Dennis 
Shotek is seen at centre. Bob Shotek is sitting on the 
right 


50 


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T here I was browsing happily through 
Starburst 3S, to see if my name had 
been spelt correctly, when my eye was 
caught by a photograph on page 55. "Yuch," I 
exclaimed, "Who is that! He looks like Atilla 
the Slug." Well, friends, you can imagine my 
shock and horror when I looked at the caption 
below the photograph and saw that it was 
me. The magazine fell from nerveless fingers 
and I rushed to the nearest mirror to reassure 
myself that I didn't look like something from 
Plan 9 from Outer Space. Thankfully I saw 
that I was my usual noble and intelligent- 
looking self and realized the photograph 
must have been some dreadful accident due 
to a defective camera or something. (See 
photograph on this page for the real me.) 

Naturally I was eager to discuss the 
situation with my good friend John Bowles, 
who supplied the photograph, and as luck 
would have it, a few days later I found myself 
on the same train with him travelling up to 
Birmingham to attend the 10th Anniversary 
Party of the Birmingham Science Fiction 
Group. "John," I said calmly as I held him out 
of the window (having first used his head to 
shatter the glass), "I am not amused." 

"Arghhh," he replied, then added, "Look, 
you can run a picture of me in your column. 
That's fair, innit?" 

I thought it over, trying to ignore Bowles' 
struggles as a train heading in the opposite 
direction rapidly approached us. Finally I 
nodded and said, "Okay, it's a deal," and 
started to drag him back into the carriage. 
Unfortunately, I was a little too slow and the 
other train sort of . . . well ... hit him. I won't 
describe the sickening scene that followed 
but you can see for yourself on this page the 
results of the accident (the photograph of 
Bowles is after the doctors worked on him). 
It's okay though — his injuries will not affect 
the standard of his book reviewing. 

The Birmingham SF Group anniversary 
party, by the way, was a lot of fun and among 
the guests were Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, 
Christopher Priest and Bob Shaw. Harry 
Harrison was in particularly high spirits, 
having,the day before finalised a deal with 
two film producers who intend to make a 
movie of Harry's famous novel The Stainless 
Steel Rat. (And on returning to London I 
learned that Thomas M. Disch, Guest of 
Honour at this year's Easter Convention in 
Leeds, has just sold the film rights to his novel 
On Wings of Song.) 

The occasion was such a success, in fact, 
that organiser Roger Peyton told me that they 
were going to have a Tenth Anniversary Party 
every year from now on . . . 

Speaking, as we were earlier, about 
disagreements among Starburst 
contributors it's interesting how rarely we 
have a unanimous opinion about the movies 
we see. Recent exceptions have been Raiders 
of the Lost Arti — we all loved it — and 
Outland — we were all less than crazy about it. 
But usually divisions of opinion are about 
50/50 with either Phil Edwards and I agreeing 
that a film is great or lousy and Alan Jones 
and our illustrious editor, whatsisname, 
taking the opposite view. The permutations 
change, of course. For instance, both Alan 
Jones and I agreed that Escape from New 
York was a great disappointment while Phil 
and the other Alan loved it. Occasionally, 
however, one of us tends to find himself in 
a complete minority. I was the one around 



here who disliked Excalibur (see issue 35) and 
I seem to be the only Starburst contributor 
vdio enjoyed Clash of the THans. 

I don't know, perhaps it's just nostalgia on 
my part due to all the enjoyment I used to get 
from Harryhausen's movies back in the late 


Below: John Bowles after hit unfortunate 
accident. "/ may never play the violin again,'' 
he said. Below inset: The Rea! (and very lovely) 

John Brotnan. 


52 





50s and early 60s, but I loved every old- 
fashioned bone in the film’s body. And I also 
believe that Clash is a great improvement on 
the two Sinbad films and the best 
Harryhausen/Schneer production since 
Jason and the Argonauts. Like the latter film. 


Left; No expense spared. Starburst bed en 
eminent surgeon examine John Bowies after the 
accident, “it will be sometime before he can 
lead a normal life," he stated. 


Clash is also based on Greek mythology but 
what distinguishes it from Jason and 
Harryhausen's other work is that it's in a 
much darker \e\n than usual and more 
faithful to the spirit of the original Greek 
myths, the chief message of which seemed to 
be that the gods were a shifty bunch and not 
to be trusted (Lord Olivier captures this 
element perfectly with his portrayal of the 
fickle and devious Zeus). It would have been 
the nearest thing to a truly adult fantasy 
movie that Harryhausen has ever made if it 
wasn't for the introduction halfway through 
of that rotten clockwork owl Bubo (short for 
Bubonic Plague, presumably) who does for 
Clash of the Titans what Nicol Williamson did 
for Excalibur. 

Whoever had the bright idea of Bubo, so 
obviously based on Artoo Oeetoo, should be 
chained to a rock and fed to the first Kraken 
who happens by. The owl is an appalling 
invention and destroys the mood of every 
scene it appears in. All its banal bits of "cute 
business" were copyrighted by Cheeta the 
C))imp in the Taiwan movies years ago. It does 
every corny routine except wink at the 
camera when the hero and heroine are 
kissing. 

But a big plus in Clash is Harry Hamlin as 
the hero Perseus. It's been the custom in the 
Harryhausen/Schneer movies to feature 
some handsome waxwork model in the lead 
who usually has trouble in walking and 
talking at the same time and is generally 
less animated than the monsters but young 
Hamlin is not only good looking but he can 
actually act. He succeeds in breathing life into 
what is essentially a dull character and on the 
strength of this performance should go far (if 
he hasn't already — one has to remember that 
it is almost three years since the live action for 
Titans was shot. Perhaps he has since retired 
from the film business and become a poultry 
farmer. And by the way, whatever happened 
to Todd Armstrong, the star of Jason?) 

Okay, the optical effects were ropey at 
times (very ropey) but Harryhausen's model 
animation was as good as ever and better 
integrated into the story this time. Some 
sequences worked better than others— the 
fight between Perseus and the Medusa is 
destined to become a classic while the final 
confrontation with the Kraken was a bit of a 
let-down — but all the animation was of a 
consistently high standard and I can't 
understand the comments of the Variety 
reviewer who said the creatures seemed to be 
"rehashes from B-pictures". But then the 
same reviewer said Clash is "... an 
unbearable bore of a film that will probably 
put to sleep the few adults stuck taking the 
kids to it." The guy obviously has no sense of 
wonder. Clash of the Titans may seem dated 
compared to the sort of stuff being produced 
by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg etc, but it 
is by no means a failure. And it's certainly 
superior to pretentious twaddle like Excalibur 

And finally, a message to all those people 
who have bmn writing in to complain that 
they can't find the wires on the photograph 
printed in issue 34 (page 47). I confess it was 
my little joke— the man in the picture sitting at 
the desk was the one really in the horizontal 
position. The chair and the desk were nailed 
to the wall and he was strapped in. The 
picture was then taken, of course, with the 
camera lying on its side. ^ 


53 





T hera is a select handful of science fiction writers 
who are bankable in the seme way that certain 
filmstars are bankable; publishers know that 
their name on a project virtually ensures its 
commercial success. Stephen King, for instance, is 
very very bankable, though he isn't generally 
associated with sf as such. Asimov, Bradbury. Clarke 
and Heinlein are bankable; so. to a lesser extent, are 
Farmer. McCaffrey, Le Guin, Niven and (in Britain, at 
least) Moorcock. Frank Herbert is very bankable, and 
when a new project includes that magic word "Dune" 
in the title, it becomes fust about the most desirable 
property of ell. 

Herbert's latest novel Gad Eieporor of Owie 
(Gollanct C6.9S). has already, in commercial terms, 
outstripped its predecessors in the USA. 'Hw figures 
are impressive; approeching three months on the 
netionti bestseller lists, almost always in one of the 
top three places; 200,000 copies in print in hardcover 
Things have come a long way since Dune was first 
published in 1 965 in a small edition by a fsirty obscure 
American publisher (the major companies weren't 
interested; they knew that such a long science fiction 
novel wasn't commercially viable). Copies of that first 
edition can now fetch up to SI 000— it's that rare— 
while the book has gone on to sell countless millions 
of copies around the world, becoming in the process 
perhaps the single most famous modem science 
fiction novel. 

Herbert spent a few days in London recently, 
helping to publicite God Emperor of Dune with 
interviews and signing sessions. I took the 
opportunity to talk with him about his career in 
general and the Dune books in particular. 

After completing his education at tba University of 
Washington in Seattle, Herbeitwent mto journalism, 
a caraar he followed until he eventuelly became a 
fuihtime writer. He worked es a reporter in a wide 
range of capacities; “General assignment, rewrite, 
eopy-sditor, feature-editor, photographer ... I was 
fnsNy assistant news editor on the major daily in San 
Fiancisco when I realized that I bed a choice; either 
do that or write. That was about 15 years ago.“ 

He made the decision there and then and has never 
looked back. He already had many years of fiction 
writing experience behind him, hiding sold his first 
stories in the late 1940s. and having made his debut 
as a science fiction writer in 1952. Once he had 
started writing sf he largely stuck to it in preference 
to other forms of fiction (though one later novel. Soul 
Catcher, is a contemporary study of the clash 
between the traditional American Indian culture and 
that of the modem USA). He explains the preference 
for sf succinctly; "elbow room". In other words, the ' 
freedom to develop artd explore ideas. Short stories 
appear not to have offered him sufficient elbow-room, 
and he did not really begin to establish his name until 
he turned to novels. His first, known aKemativaly as 
Under Pressure (his preferred title) or The Dragon in 
the Sea. is a fut-paced psychologicsl thriller set on 
board a submarine during a future war. It remains, 
along with Soul Catcher, the novel which Herbert 
chooses as a personal favourite among his work. His 
second wss Dune, the first magaune sarM version of 
which appeared in 1963. HwatMowedby Dues 
Metatek OMno ofOaneapi by the new book. I 
asked howeiucb planning arid prepdntion had gone 
Mo the book 

"Well, there wes six yepre of teturch, though I 
was atso doing other things, of course. Than sbouta 
year sad a half pf writing. I saw the Dune tiilogv as.., 
Onbeok— absokiteiy unpublishable, of couies . 

^ I bs^JIfT? of tf'o second two 
first WBs com^ted, but 



Dune is perhaps the supreme example of what has 
come to be known among science fiction critics es 
"worWcraft"; the building of a complete alien world, 
with its own geogrephy. history, biology and ecology. 
The plenet Oune. or Arrakis is the real star of the 
book— a desert world, inhabited by gigantic 
sandworms and by a human population, the Fremen, 
who survive by scrupulous presanmtion of every 
precious drop of moisture. How did Herbert go about 
building this detailed and convincing environment^ 

"I had two concepts riding on me at the time One 
was a book about the messianic complex in human 
society— why do we follow a leader? While I was 
doing this I was fishing around for a setting at a town 
called Florsnce. Oregon, where the US Oepartment of 
Agriculture was controlling sand dunes by plantation 
and other techniques, and I got caught by the 
concept of how we inflict ourselves on the planet, 
and what we can do about it What is the time-frame 
vmthin which these things happen? I started 
researching that and in the process I saw that the 
two went together " 

The messiah in Dune is the reluctant figure of Paul 
Atreides, who resists the role because he has . 
prescient visions which show bloody relic iou svy s 
following his acclemation. It is this reluctance on the 
part of the protagonist to fulfil what appears to be an 
inevitable destiny which gives the iMvd part of its 
strength. The ecological transformation of the desert 
planet. Herbert's other original idea, is only seen over 
the course of the first tirse novels, and ioevitabiy has 
given rise to some disappointment among readers 
that the desert world itself does not feature so 

strongly after the first book, ^t as Herbert points 
out. there is always some possible objection to 
sequels; either the author is accused of repetition, 
or. if the sequel is different, of depriving the reader of 
the chance to relive the original experience. Herboft 
took the second, and more dangerous course, but the 
continumg success of the sequels suggests that he 
has managed to keep his audience. The latest, God 
Emperor of Dune was not part of the ori(^ plan. "It 
came about because I'd cneted a characters^ 
wouldn't let go of me; Leto II. The whole idea of the 
human and the monster in one flesh kept fascinating 
me; and the ides of an arapira, a society, a civilizatiork 
that's under the control of UM dorninam figure all 
those millennia. What kind of society evolves out of 
that? I wanted to play that imaginative game, so I 
went back to it ^ 

At the end of Children of Dane. Leto— Paul's son— 
achieves aUad of symbiotic ftsion with tha lanml 
stage of the sandworm, and in doing so acqurrei ,^ - 
super-pewan. God Emperor begins three thaiund 
years later, with Leto still ruling the human galaxy, 
but by this.time transformed into a half-human hrrif- 
sandworm creature. It's a compelling image, and the 
book seems sure to enjoy the same popularity as its 
predecessors. The ending offers intriguing 
possibHitiet for further Dune novels. • poosibility 
which Herbert does not rule out "I have no aversion 
to it I have no story in mind at the moment. If the 
mood strikes me, if I get an idea and I think it would 
make a good story, thagiTI do it but Tm 
the 'God, I've got to do knottier SbadockHolme's" ^ 
story' getne." ' - 

The poesfeiktypl a Dunewam haUjpfM^ed 
and receded several tiaips owar ^ yaara J asked 
KartMrt about the bisMfy of <ke profact ' ~ 

Jacobs bought it aroundJJI^ii^gfJIPIhe 


too interested in what they were doing anyway. It 
wss obvious that Alejandro ^s going to do a 
horsewhip the Pope storyl" 

The book was subsequently resold to Oino de 
laurentiis, who passed off half of it to Un'iversal. 

Ridley Scott was brought in to direct but, according 
. to Herbert had rather different ideas as to what the 
movie should be. "Ridley said to me that he wanted to 
do an incest picture . . . Paul and Jessica " 

Jessica IS Paul's mother, and there's certainly no 
hint of incest in the novel. Did Herbert know why 
Ridley Scott wanted to turn Dune into a film about 
incest and what was his reaction to the idea? "I just 
walked awey I didn't do any great breast-beating or 
shouting; that tends not to achieve anything in the 
movie industry I don't know why he wanted to do it . 
wen, if you look at Ridley's movies I have yet to see a 
real human relationship in them. Maybe he doesn't 
want to get into that. He does tend to go for shock 
value; that's one of the schticks he's riding. Maybe 
he thinks it's the only way to be successful. I'm not in 
hiihead, so I can't say. Yes, this is why he does it. I 
said to him that there would be a lot of disappointed 
people, but I didn't maka any big argument about it 
because I had no control. I had influence— and I don't 
know whether that influence was substantialty 
effective in the fact that Ridley's no longer the 
J intSot Ttn not in those high-level decision making 
rxmfetances. ,. 

UeamMiile the fim got nowhere. "They started 
working on a sc^. Then Ridley got other things to 
dO^then his option lapsed. Now they have David 
l^ch and David, as far as I'm concerned, is an ideal 
x;horce Number oaa, above all the others, he's a Dune 
fan, so ha wan ta to do the book. And what he did with 
The Elepbanlllaii shows that he can. He has that j 
translator’ s ability— superbly, I think. He has a good- 
team The thing that's been holding it up is the 
Writer's Guild strike When that's over, I would 
knagins in a month to six weeks we’N have a script 4 
wrote a script quite a while ago which th#y have. It% 
too long, but some parts of it may survhrf 
The tachmcal pn^ms will be forM^hle. 
particularly the convincing rendition of a sandwomv— 
a creature so large that. fuRy-grown, its mouth is the 
size of a football pitch. A mixture of modal and 
sectional mock-up wiHabnost certamly be used to 
create it on screen. Design is also important, and here 
Herbert hopes to involve American artist John 
Schoenherr, who illustrated the origi^l magazine 
serials and later did the paintings forihe Dune 
Calender, in the project. One must hgpe he succaeds, 
-fo( of aN the visual rendjfiins so fan^choenheiTs 
IndispulMily^the most gffeciiye 
Herbert was ktstNuMvad fgr MijM in Flash 
Gwdao: he spent six weeks at fiMood working on 
Jhe script vrtiile Nicholas s'still the director. . 

W hesn't seen the finishedproauct, so has no idea it I 
aiRtelemenuof hisjwk^uWed It is mteresting ! 

(and^strating!) to sgftttilfl^Vn y 
— Unfilhwieitmiglrt IwJ^sWIke 

Finallsdhith^nexfaiixintment ( 

rt his opir] 

maih^sgptpiave pouitad oui%^ a i 

;esert planet sei^^^ 

aarvufl ^l tfUfc came up with leo^Dl f 

of exact comti0iiJF4lMt cannot be aipnc^^^ I 
belong^ 


I to me ia tbe Star Wam^q 

went aftas lajljUjit (Tail'rHi a on Bta taas.ftBt ! 
cgjttia atllT'^iaarit ought to belong4o^id>t9etkre : 
amthduafi J,tfwught wee very i 




E 


btj lohn bomloft 






T he telephone can sometimes be a 

deadly weapon — especially when down 
the line comes the growling voice of 
editor Alan McKenzie saying something to 
the effect of "Do you know what the date is? I 
Where's that copy for the next TV Zone?" 


However, this time it wasn't all venom 'n' 
vitriol and I got off lightly by just being 
skinned alive. Following my limp excuses for 
being late once again we bounc^ around a 
few possible ideas for upcoming tv feature 
articles. As a result our thoughts drifted to the 


spy-show genre. 

Mmm, Man from U.N.C.LE., maybe? What 
do you think of Wild Wild West, uh? Mmm, 
maybe. Hey, how about Mission: Impossible, 
eh? Mmm, maybe we could do something 
there. Then, of course, we ran off into the old 
"Do you remember that episode where . . . ?" 
and that was that. But, it could be that 
eventually I'll be taking a shot at doing some- 
thing on Man from U.N.C.LE. and Mission: 
Impossible. And possibly sometime in the 
future something on Wild Wild West (one of 
my favourite pieces of bizarre lunacy on tv). 

Sadly though, one of the great problems 
facing tv journalists on this side of the Atlantic 
is that most tv programmes are not readily 
available for viewing. And I mean viewing in 
the sense that if an author wanted to re- 
evaluate a feature movie, be it Bride of 
Frankenstein ( 1 935), The Day the Earth Stood 
Still (1951) or Planet of the Apes (1968), he 
could acquire a print from a 1 6mm distributor 
and run it at his pleasure. No such thing for 
television — as a lot of convention 
organisers/programmers have found out. If 
you want to check out a copy or copies of tv 
shows on 16mm (or even tap)e) it is very 
difficult to get the material (unless of course 
you have a black market source). 

Consider American tv shows, for example. 
Something like 90% of filmed American tv 
still exists and is, in a sense, available for 
screening! The material exists in major tv 
company/network vaults situated in various 
parts of the world. There is, for instance, a 
major distribution point in Europe which 
serves the "Western Hemisphere", or 
something like that, with syndicated 
American tv shows. It serves Portugese tv if 
they want 233 episodes of Have Gun-Will 
Travel or German tv if they want 140 Twilight 
Zones. What they don't serve is the 
individual, the convention organiser or the 
author who wants to view a small selection. 
However, if the BBC wanted to screen all 110 
episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 
then it is along this source that the prints 
would come. 

In other words, you would have to invent a 
tv station (and maybe a country to go with it) 
in order to view any part of television history. 

All of this brings me back to the problems 
facing those who want to use twenty-year-old 
tv shows for educational reasons, for author's 
research, or simply for fan activity purposes. 
Even if you manage to battle your way 
through the 'red tape' of print availability— 
which shouldn't really involve much more 
than the date required, the quantity, and the 
cost of transit — there's the stickier, tougher 
world of copyright, union agreements and 
residual payments. 

Let's run a possible format here. The editor 
calls and agrees that a piece on, say. Mission: 
Impossible would be a good idea. 

You look up your old notes and jottings on 
the show and find that there isn't enough to 
work on. You need to see a lot of this stuff 
again because your memory isn't what it 
used to be. 

You find out who the syndication 
distributor is (in England) and call them. You 
have a limited list of episodes that you'd like 
to view and can they arrange for prints to be 
made available? You explain why you want to 
see them, what it's for, etc. 

They tell you that their distribution 
agreement restricts them from allowing the 



This spread: A selection of scenes from the theatrical feature One of Our Spies is Missing, compiled 
by editing together episodes of the tv series The Man From U.N.C.L.E,, which starred Robert 
Vaughan as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Iliya Kuryakin. 


56 



material to be screened "direct projection" 
(that is, the material can be shown via 
television transmission but not directly onto a 
movie-screen in a theatre). You have to have 
it cleared through various other parties 
before they'll let you have prints. 

Now this is a whole new basket of snakes. 
You call the original American producers of 
the show and somehow convince them it's all 
for a worthy cause — that it may also open up 
a new commercial avenue for one of their old 
products. They say that they'll agree only if 
the Guilds also give their permission. 

So now you're on your way to a £10(X) 
phone-bill. You call the Writers Guild of 
America and go through the whole routine of 
whys and what-fors again. They'll be happy 
to let you see the material if you clear it with 
the Directors Guild. 

You contact the Directors Guild of America 
and plead your case. They see no harm in the 
project and give you an OK — as long as you 
have it checked and cleared with the Screen 
Actors Guild. 'The Writers and Directors 
organisations used to be pretty sympathetic 
to further application of their work broause, 
unlike theatrical films, television material 
usually has a one-screening lifespan — an 
obvious point of frustration for the creators). 

The Screen Actors Guild (like their British 
counterpart. Equity) comes across like the 
Berlin Wall. They have the rights of their 
members to consider, etc. They can’t allow 
the screening of one episode to go by unless 
you obtain permission (which they'll advise 
against) from every single actor/actress in 
the film and pay them their individual 
percentage for re-run. This is naturally 
impossible, as well as ridiculous, and you try 
to emphasise that the screening would not be 
a money-making enterprise — just a point of 
research/study/appreciation. 

Still, they're not interested in any element 
of "further appreciation" and add a final sting 
by asking you exactly what the Musicians 
Union had to say. 

The Musicians Union? Oh, rtol 

Obviously, the above commando course is 
very much a generalised sequence of 
events— but it is based on the experiences of 
several colleagues who have actually run the 
course. Needless to say, as a result, they 
never did get to pass Go or collect their . . . 

Retuning to the writing Mission: 

Impossibie note, unless you have access to 
bootleg prints or tapes you have to enter into 
lengthy, detailed research— involving almost 
half a decade of Variety and Hollywood 
Reporter listings as well as a lot of other 
sources (including correspondence with key 
people involved with the series). 

Now all this is fine and should be done 
anyway. That is if you happen to be writing a 
book on the subject, and you have about two- 
and-a-half years in which to do it. But a 
2-30(X)-word article which you'd like to see 
appear before you get much older . . . 
Unfortunately, you're forced to cram all this 
long-way-round research into as many weeks 
as you can afford, and then hope that a lot of 
the "un-viewed" material (for which you may 
have had to depend on other people's 
contemporary reviews) is not mis- 
representative or mis-leading. 

Nevertheless, I still intend to go ahead with 
several possible tv projects, including one on 
Man from U.N.C.LE. (for which I’m currently 
exchanging correspondence with the show's 


creator-producer-writer, Sam Rolfe). 

Along with Mission: Impossible I'd 
eventually like to cover such series as Wild 
Wild West, The Sixth Sense, It's About Time, 
Alfred Hitchcock Presents/Hour, The 
Addams Family, The Girl from U.N.C.LE. (as 


a separate item), and Randall and Hopkirfc. 

Of course, if any tv buff out there has any 
wonderful ideas, thoughts, views and/or 
checklists, etc, on these shows I'd be 
delighted to hear from them (c/o the 
Starfourst offices). 





MARVEL CLASSIFIEDS 


Wanted 

t 


COMICS WANTED 
Top caih prices paid for Marvel. 
D.C.. Dell. Gold Key. Charlton. 
Classics, ^gles. T.V.21 ate. 

No collection too large. Send list 
of what you have for sale to; 

Bob Sb^. is Cumberland Rd.. 
West Heath. Congleton. Cheshire. 
CWt2SPH. 


Shops 


Metropolis Media Bookstore 
3-11 Grenfell Ave., 

Roneo Comet. Romford, Essex. 

(near Roinfoed Saikm) 

The place for Marvel. D.C. etc. 
comics. ma^iitesA books: from 
Gold & Sinret Age comics right 
to the very latest imports. Send 
wants list or SAE for new imports 
list. We buy and sell. Also good 
stock of 2000 AD * Dr ^o. 
Special New Line: Rock T-shirts. 
State favourite tingetlband (lat alter- 
natives pleax & either unall medium 
or large) (i each & 30p p&p 


FORBIDDEN PLANET 
BOOKSHOP 

Comics, Science Fiction and 
nim & TV fantasy (Star 
Wars, .Superman, etc) — 
posters, stills, portfolios, 
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don WC2H 8NN. Mail 
Order Service. Please send 
s.a.e. for giant monthly list 
to above address. 


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We stock US & GB comics 
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No lists but please call in 
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100.(X)0 comics in stock 
also portiolioa, magazinsa, 
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COMIC SHOWCASE 

IS Catherine St, London WC2 
01-379 3345 

Opn aiz days a weak 10am to 
6pm. Wa era THE SPECIALISTS 
in old Amarican comict and our 
vast stock tangaa from Goldan 
Ago through lo Iba 70's; including 
Marvala, D.C.a, E.C.a, Timalya. 
and many mota. Ragulai ahip- 
manls itom Iba USA anabia ua to 
oUai a wide aalaction of tha non- 
distributad Marvala. Wa are 
always interaalsd in buying col- 
lacttona of old or rare comics in 
men condition. 



Sheffield Space Centre 

485 London Road. Heeley. 

Sheffield S2 4HL 

Telephone: Sheffield 581040 

We stock a Urge selection of S2F, 
Fanta^ paperbacks, American 
comics. Port folios. Magazines etc. 
Open - Monday. Tuesday. Thursday. 
Friday IBam - Sjptn. Saturday - 9am. 
Closed Wednesday. 


KENTa Inadlng stockUta of 
Amofican eomica. 
teUnen fiction, horror 6 fantasy 
film matarial and novnia ate. 

The Edge of Forever, 

54, BaHagrovn Road, Walling. Kant. 

ItaUphona 01-301 37721. 

Opan Monday to Saturday (txctiit 
Wadnaadayl. (Mad ordar — aaa 
Maya MarchandUingl. 


THE COMIC BOOKSHOP 

Comic* (irom 1939 lo Doc.'S!) SF, 
film & TV UnUfy & morchondiBing . 
Opon Mon to Fri 10*m to Spra; Sot 
9om lo 6pm. MonlUy boI— lial ond 
diocottttlod odvonco lifi: PImm 
• ond largo SAE to: 234 Ukoaloo 
Bd., NolUnghom NG7 3EA. 
(0602) 789282. 




Mail Order 



SCIBRCE nCTIOl 
(Soeadtraek Lft) 

Humanoide. Battle Beyond Stars. Fmel 
Countdown, berk Star. Star Crash. Buck 
Rogera. Black Hole. Capncom One. 
Coma. DeiUnatlan Moon. LoBant Run. 
Mauer ol the World. Rockeuhlp X-M. 
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Worcester. Tel; (0905) 27267 



Americen comics 
for collector*. Back issues & 
latest Imports of D.C., Marvel 
and others. Send a large SAE 
lor free lists. 1 also pay top 
rates for pre 1975 collectiona — 
send details. 

Chris Gavin, 

3 Sranathro Terrace, Muchalls, 
Kinesrdinshire AB3 2RP. 



Marvel and D.C. comics, 
Miml tnd Fsnttsy film magizinct 
for sale tt competitive prices. 
Send an la.e. for 4 page lilting to 
Oraham Holt, 26 Burnet Qoic, 
Loogbam, Ps^ie WA2 OUH. 
Wanted — good quality Marvel, 
D.C. collectiona, TV21 comici 
and toys. Good pricet paid. 


JPMf BNSOaS: Skcl SMa> Bmoc 
tmm. CI2.SS • 6Sai6a 
' CREDIT CABO CALCUUTIIM: LCD. ti SO 
ac. |6a 

a M OMI ELECmOMC niOJKTS KIT; 
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laalai SI4 SIT da cdSn adam 


1940s to 1960 b Mlarvol 
and D.C. coenics bought 
and sold. 

Call Shnon Graanwoodon 
01-863 0214. 


HITCH HIKERS GUIDE TO 
THE GALAXY BADGES 
2V6’ diameter, dayglow & black 
print. Three designs. 1. H.H.G. 
T.V. logo (orange). 2. Restaurant 
at the End of the Universe book 
logo (pink). 3 Don't Panic (green). 
Send stamped SAE -f design 
choice 4- 40p per badge 
cheguefP.O. to Image Screen 
Craft (dept 42c), 16 Rutten (.ane, 
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copyright Douglas Adams. 


Comic Marts 


NORTHWEST COMIC MARTS 
pratants top daalara aaSing oW Et 
new Marvel D.C. comics ate., film 
magarinaa. art books, portfolios b 
other ralatad material. Doors opw 
at 12 noon, a dmi s sion ordy 20p. 

AT THESE VENUES: 
MANCHESTER COMIC MART St 
Piccadily Plaza Exhibition Hal. 
York Street, Manchester, on 
August 2M Et November 7lh. 
UVERPOOL COMIC MART at 
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Lana, Livarpool on Septamfaar 19lh 
Et Oacambar Sth. 

For any funhar nfocmatton b map sand 
SAE to North an a l Comic Marta. Bob 
Smart. 15 Cumbartand Rd. Waat Haath. 
CongMon. Clwshira. CWI2 4PH 


John FInon 

Dr Who weekly: no. 1 at 7Sp, 2-43 at 
25p each. Dr Who monthly: noa.4i-5 1 
at 40p each. Star Wars weekly: noa. I -60 
at 20p each. Starlord: noa. 1-22 at 20p 
each. Poaiagc SOp. Or xnd I4p uamp 
for American Cofiuc catalogue. 

I, Orchard Way, Henaall, 

N. Humberside. 


Over 100,000 comics on sale. 

An work. iaie« imports. Warrens, 
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T-shirts. Silver & Golden Age. 
Open 12 noon October 3rd 
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MC4 





A Starburst Interview with 



I n Part One of this interview, culled from a 
50-page interview Starburst Hollywood 
correspondent Bill Warren conducted in 
April, Joe Dante discussed the genesis of his 
interest in science fiction and horror movies, 
and told about the making of Piranha. In Part 
2, he talks about a couple of failed protects as 
well as The Howling. Of the young directors 
working in Hollywood, Joe Dante perhaps 
has the fewest pretentions about himself, 
and possibly the surest grasp on just what it 
is he wants to do. He will be a major figure in 
films. 

Starburst: Piranha did very well. 

Joe Dante: Yeah, it did fine. Anyway, the 
producers were happy. It did me a lot of good. 

I got Orca 2 out of it, for Dino De Laurentiis, 
which I eventually talked him out of making, 
for which the movie-going public owes me a 
debt of gratitude. Then there was Jaws 3, 
People O, which was a big career step for me 
in that it was a big movie company 
(Universal), and I got to see how a big 
company works, which is not entirely that 
glamorous. I worked on rewriting a script for 
it that certain people in the big organization 
thought was hilarious and that other people 
didn't. It was a mixture of a lot of the wrong 
people who were already mixed up 
incorrectly before I got there. 

Back in the old days, there would have been 
one guy. 



T<v: Two types of monster from Joe Dante 
films. The mutated piranhas from Dante's 
second full-length feature. Piranha (inset) 
and one of the werewolves that featured in 
The Howling. Above: Director Joe Dante on 
the set of The Howling. 


Back with Roger Corman there would have 
been one guy. And I tell you, the more I find 
out about how this business works, the more I 
appreciate Roger. He is a person who may 
give you an answer you don't agree with, but 
it is an answer. When you get to a hierarchy 
situation, you ask a question and it goes up 
the ladder. You get a "no" and you don't have 
any idea who to complain to. It's some 
faceless person you may never meet, you 
may never know the name of. Jaws 3 did not 
work out for various reasons. Its basic 
problem was that it was an amalgam of 
Hollywood Boulevard and Piranha, which is 
why I was hired to do it. But they decided not 
to make it, and I think they may have regretted 
it later. Their rationale was that they wanted 
to make another serious Jaws movie, which 
they've just given to Alan Landsberg. So how 
serious can they be about it? But Jaws 3 is 
being shot as we spteak. 

Is this where The Howling came in? 

The Howling at that point was an embryo 
project. It was a werewolf movie, which 
appealed to me, and Mike Finnell was 
involved in it. When Allan Arkush got sick for 
a couple of days, I came in and finished Rock 
'n' Roll High School, and did some editing. 
Mike Finnell produced that film, and was a 
production assistant on Hollywood 
Boulevard. He was going to produce The 
Howling with Dan Blatt, whom I had met on I 



Never Promised You a Rose Garden (I recut 
the end of that film). When Jaws 3, People O 
fell through, it turned out that Jack Conrad, 
the guy who had optioned the novel of The 
Howling and had written a previous script, 
had gotten himself into a position where 
Avco-Embassy was worried that maybe he 
couldn't direct the picture. I think it was 
because they had read his script, which was 
slavishly faithful to a book which makes no 
sense, in addition to dropping the werewolf 
angle and including people who sent their 
spirits out to real wolves who were hanging 
around in the forest. 

Did you consider using real wolves? 

Briefly. I met a wolf and he didn't like me. The 
real difficulty was the time problem involved 
with working with animals on the set. And 
there's no majesty, no fantasy to using real 
animals, there's no mystery. It's a real wolf, 
it's an animal. You could be chased through 
the woods by a real wolf. You're dealing with 
someone who's scary while he's changing, 
and then becomes something that is not 
scary. That wasn't what we wanted to do. We 
wanted to do a fantasy, a monster movie. 
Why do you do this kind of werewolf as 
opposed to the Lon Chaney Jr type? 

What's the point of doing Lon Chaney Jr? If 
you could still make that kind of film. Hammer 
Films would never have gone out of business. 
People have seen it. They'd seen it when 
Tyburn made Legeitd of the Werewolf, and in 
this country (United States) that could not get 
released. There is no audience for something 
that people have seen a million times. I'm not 
interested in duplicating what Jack Pierce 
did; Jack Pierce did that kind of thing better. 

Rob Bottin is really into doing new things. 



The things that excited him about Rick Baker 
and Dick Smith, people he really admires, is 
that they were doing things with makeup that 
had never been done before. And that's what 
Rob wants to do. We had some other projects 
we wanted to do together, like Meltdown. We 
had a lot of ideas. Contingent on his 
involvement with The Howling was that he 
would be able to do what he wanted. 

Rob designed the werewolf. He went 
through a lot of different designs, a lot of 
different sculptures, and ended up basing it 
consciously or unconsciously on a sort of 
Frazetta-like image, a Creepy cover, of a real 
wolf standing up on its hind legs. Also from 
some woodcuts which we found and used in 
the film. 

Whose idea was it to do the transformation in 
real time? 

That was not a specific idea. The idea was that 
we wanted to change the faces and the 
shapes of the characters on screen, because 
we knew that had never been dorte. Now 
initially we wanted to do it all in one shot. We 
wanted to do a great transformation scene 
where a naked woman turns into a werewolf, 
right? Well, that proved to be beyond our 
capabilities. Now Rick Baker was initially 
involved in this, too, but Rick suddenly 
remembered that he promised John Landis, 
who'd been his friend for years, that he was 
going to do his picture, which was now about 
to go into preproduction. So Rick ended up 
being our consultant, and Rob would often 
check ideas with him. 

Originally, Rob built a giant werewolf 
puppet, which operated with rods like a 
Muppet, and it proved to be unwieldy. At the 
last minute, we used a combination of a suit. 


worn by Jeff Shank, and fake legs which Rob 
built. Rob wanted to play Eddie Quist, the 
main werewolf, but he wouldn't have had the 
time to make the stuff that he made if he 
played a part in the movie. Also, he wouldn't 
have been able to tell us what he thought of 
the way it was looking, because he would 
have bMn inside it. On this film, he had a lot 
of input into the lighting of the special effect 
scenes. I don't think he's had that kind of 
power on any other picture. 

You used the word “majesty, "and that's 
certainly the effect / felt in the scene where the 
werewolf plucks the papers out of Terry’s 
hand. It implies the monster is a thinking 
being. 

I like that too, but on the set the crew were all 
clucking and shaking their heads. On the set, 
it was hysterically funny. It was a tremendous 
chance to take, to do the file scene the way we 
did. Rob and I toyed with the idea of having it 
talk, or almost talk, kind of growlish. If you 
listen in the movie, we did some of that and 
mixed it out. We finally thought that that 
might be just too much. 

The beast in that scene is a head suit, with 
arms, with the head controllable via cables 
down the back. It could change expression. 

I think that scene, in which Terry (Belinda 
Balaski) is killed by the werewolf, is a better 
scene cinematically than the transformation 
scene. By having the cartoon there, that Chris 
(Dennis Dugan) is watching, not only is the 
audience sort of disarmed for a moment, 
which makes the horror thing work a little 
better, but there actually is a correlation 
between the situation that Terry is in and the 
situation the lamb is in in the cartoon. 

What about the transformation scene? 


60 







Rob had underestimated how much time a lot 
of things were going to take. He wanted 
everything to be perfect. There were short 
tempers. The transformation scene we 
imagined would run 30 seconds, ended up 
running 2’/] minutes, stretching credulity. 

The scene is in two stages, one in which the 
actor appears, and one in which the actor 
goes away, being replaced by one of a series 
of fake heads that could change. It's very 
expensive to have an actor in makeup all day, 
and it was extremely time-consuming to get 
him to the stages he reached. We were 
alternating between shooting the heads 
without the actor, and having the actor come 
down. Rob had a lot of assistants, but it boiled 
down to what I've always found; you can't 
trust someone else to do things, you have to 
do it yourself to get it right. Which is why I cut 
my own movies. The technical end of the 
movie, considering the budget ($1.8 million) 
and the time, is remarkable, but it could be 
better and it will be better in Rick's picture. An 
American Werewolf in London. 

Believe it or not, there are some things in it 
that I don't think are as good as some of the 
things we didn't use. We shot the hell out of 
that transformation scene: we had reams and 
reams of footage of these things, pieces of 
masks and masks doing various things in 
various closeups and various camera 
movements. It got to the point where I was 
dazed by watching it. I couldn't tell any more, 
was it better when it went out slowly? 

/ see both in the picture, because at the end 
when TC (Don McLeod) transforms, his face 
pops out quickly. 

The TC thing didn't work out very well. That 



one shot works, but we shot a whole front 
view of him which we didn't use because I 
didn't like the way it looked. That was 
originally going to be a much more elaborate 
transformation, but we found just the one 
piece that worked and put it in. Also, there's 
no point in making people think you're going, 
to top yourselves if that's not your intention. If 
I had it to do over, I would do a lot of it very 
differently. I didn't like the love scene; it was 
the one thing we took out of the book that I 
never liked. We shot it very quickly, in like two 
hours. It's too long; it was left long under 
pressure to have a sex scene in the picture. 
There are things in the movie that I don't like, 
but there are more things that I do like. 

A lot of people have said that there are too 
many gags in The Howling. 

Yeah, a lot of people haven't liked the fact that 
there's so much humour in it. Now, The 
Invisible Man is one of my favourite movies. 
James Whale switches second-by-second 
from comedy to horror; one minute The 
Invisible Man is stealing somebody's bicycle, 
the next he's knocking over a baby carriage. 
One minute he's throwing ink at the 
pK)liceman, the next he's smashing in his 
head with a stool. 

One of my favourites is the Frederic March 
JekyH & Hyde, in which Hyde is funny and 
scary at the same time, for the same reasons. 
Yes that's very daring. The cut from Karen' 
(Dee Wallace) to the dog food commercial 
could be construed as a cheap laugh. There 
are other cheap laughs in The Howling, but I 
didn't think of that as one. To me, rather than 
reducing her sacrifice, like you felt, it puts it in 
a context that makes it somewhat more 
poignant, because it's a sacrifice that's being 







perceived by the television audience on the 
same level as the dog food commercial. The 
very medium that Karen has been trained to 
believe is the medium of truth is the medium 
that people out there don’t believe in because 
it's been abused so often. Very few people get 
any of that out of the picture, but it is there. 

To me, one of the best things about the whole 
movie is that Eddie (Robert Ricardo} isn't Just 
a werewolf, he's a homicidal maniac who's a 
werewolf. 

Eddie is crazy enough that he would do 
almost anything. Rob calls him the Charles 
Manson of werewolves. 
f noticed that the worst werewolves are all 
siblings, the Quist family. 

I don't think this is brought out, but they're the 
ones who may be natural, born werewolves. 
All the others are people who were human 
beings who have had to adjust to what is like a 
disease that they've caught. And all those 
people are trying to fool themselves into 
thinking they can still be what they were and 
also be werewolves. Marsha (Elisabeth 
Brooks), Eddie and TC realize that this is what 
they are; it's not good, it's not bad, it's just 
what they are. The interesting movie that 
could have been made, which wasrt'f made, is 
about Eddie. He was sold a bill of goods by 
the doctor, apparently. Eddie's gone to the 
city and tried to fit in, but hasn't been able to 
do so, not able to control himself, and he's 
gone crazy from the city. Now that's an 
interesting story. Why isn't the picture about 
that? Because Eddie isn't in the book, that’s 
why. At least we fixed the doctor (Patrick 
MacNee) so he wasn't as boring as he was in 
the book, but in fixing him, we implied so 
much more about him. Why is he doing this? 


Is he a werewolf, is he not a werewolf? I think 
he is, myself, and so did Patrick Macnee. 

One of the story problems is that you don't 
really know why Doc Waggnersent Karen to 
the colony. 

He implied that at the end, but I cut it out. "I 
had to find out if she saw Eddie change in the 
booth". But that's an extremely lame 
motivation. One of the things I learned at New 
World is that you don't spend time on things 
you think are weaknesses in the film. You just 
try to cover up weak scenes, weak actors. 
Piranha was 80% camouflage. The Howling is 
only 40% camouflage, but a lot still is 
camouflage. A lot is cutting from something 
so they don't see what you want them to not 
see. Directing a movie is not just directing the 
actors, it's directing the audience. There are 
ways of cutting stupid lines of dialogue so 
you won't get a laugh with them; if you cut 
away from the person talking to the person 
reacting, on a specific syllable. You can avoid 
getting a laugh if you're clever enough, but 
the trick is to spot it soon, which is why you 
have early screenings. 

About the future. More horror movies? 

I like horror movies, but as we all know, this 
cycle is breathing its last. Whatever money 
this picture makes is going to be on the basis 
of being a monster movie. Maniac is now 
what people think a horror movie is. People 
have forgotten that these pictures used to be 
about bigger worlds than ours and larger- 
than-life situations and imagination. Now 
these pictures prey on urban paranoia, and 
endless brutality, and different ways to 
dismember the human body. The Howling 
has suffered some from that, by being 
lumped in with these pictures. Word will get 


around if it stays in the theatre. 

I think the only hope is fantasy. The Star 
Wars audience. The Empire Strikes Back 
audience, they like to be scared, but they also 
like to be amused, and they like to be thrilled] 
and they like to be amazed. And The Howling 
does have some amazing things in it, which l| 
think is its strength. The trick is to convince 
people that it's a monster movie, a return to 
form, and r>ot a picture where you have to , 
close your eyes every five minutes because 
somebody's getting their fingers cut off. 

Do you think the classic horror movie is dead? 
No, I don't think so. I think you could do an 
expensive Frankenstein, even though the 
play was a flop on Broadway. But I don't wanti 
to do the Hammer thing, I don't want to go 
through the Universal book page by page, 
and make a great mummy movie. 

Do you have any other projects in mind? 

I like a script by Peter S. Beagle, Trick or Treat. 
It's weird, it's offbeat, it's Bradburyian. I'd like 
to do John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up, 
which I'm afraid is such a depressing novel 
that it would clear the theatre. I was also 
offered a story. Claw, by Philip K. Dick. It's 
interesting, but it takes place in a post-atomic 
war era, and I find that to be a turnoff. I'll 
probably do this EC comics picture. David 
Cronenberg has been writing the story, which 
I kind of like. Walter Hill, Cronenberg and I 
would each direct a segment. ' 

Do you want to continue making horror 
pictures? 

I love horror pictures, but if I get myself typed] 
I'll find myself out of work. People are tired of 
the killer-with-a-knife type of thing. I'd liketc 
stay in the fantasy genre, although I'd like to 
make all kinds of movies. /VTN 



■Right: T.C. Ount (Don 
McLeod) htgins hn 
transformation into a 
■r/urc'f/oH Below: Greg 
Cannom applies latex over 
Robert Picardo's mash. 
Bladders under the skin 
will make Ricardo's skin 
appear to ripple. Below 
right: Director Joe Dante 
examines one of Rob 
Bottin's mechanical heads, 
used in the transformation 
scenes. Thanks to design, 
direction and John Nora's 
photography the cuts 
between the real fake and 
heads are very smooth. 
Bottom. Terry (Belinda 
Balaski) is attacked by a 
werewolf. 




RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 


Director Stephen Spielberg chats with actors Harrison Ford 
and Karen Allen during a break in the filming of the 
spectacular climactic scene of the new Lucasfilm 
production, Raidert of the Lost Ark.